Two magnitude 5.6 earthquakes shook southwestern China’s Yunnan and Guizhou provinces yesterday, killing at least 80 people, destroying more than 6,650 homes, triggering landslides and disrupting power and communications.
There were 795 reports of injuries, China News Service reported today citing Yunnan’s Department of Civil Affairs. Power and communications were cut off and transportation disrupted in Luozehe, the town in Yunnan’s Yiliang county that was worst hit, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. About 201,000 people were evacuated, China News said.
Premier Wen Jiabao arrived at the quake-stricken areas to oversee rescue efforts after midnight, China News reported. A 7.9-magnitude temblor in neighboring Sichuan province in May 2008 killed about 90,000 people after schools and buildings collapsed, sparking protests and accusations that corrupt officials turned a blind eye to substandard construction.
Local governments yesterday dispatched rescue teams to affected areas, bringing 6,000 sets of tents, quilts and overcoats, China News said. A total of 744,000 people were affected by the earthquakes, it said. More than 60 aftershocks hit as of 6 p.m. local time, Xinhua reported.
The death toll from yesterday’s earthquakes relative to their strength is because of a high population density, weak housing structures and the mountainous landscape, the People’s Daily newspaper reported on its website, citing Huangpu Gang, head of Yunnan’s earthquake bureau. The affected regions are inhabited by 205 residents for each square kilometer compared with the province’s average of 117, the newspaper said.
The second magnitude-5.6 quake jolted the border area of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan shortly after the first temblor struck at 11:19 a.m. yesterday, according to the website of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Raymond Liu in Beijing at rliu118@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Liu at jliu42@bloomberg.net; Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net
