Dharamsala, May 12 – A major earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale jolted Wenchuan County in southwest China’s Sichuan Province at 2:28 p.m. on Monday, the State Seismological Bureau (SSB) said. The epicenter was 90-kilometers away from the provincial capital, Chengdu.
The hardest hit county, Wenchuan, with a population of 111,800, lies in southeast part of the Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba, 146 km to the northwest of Chengdu, provincial capital of Sichuan has a large ethnic Tibetan population. Wenchuan County is also home to the Wolong Nature Reserve, China’s leading research and breeding base for endangered giant pandas.
Some 900 students were feared buried by a mudslide caused by the quake when a Sichuan high school building collapsed, Xinhua news agency reported. In a separate incident, four students were killed and at least 100 were injured when two schools collapsed in Liangping county of Chongqing municipality, adjacent to Sichuan, state-run Xinhua said
Another person is reported to have died when a water tower collapsed in the city of Mianyang, in Santai county.
At least 107 people are reported to have died, but figures could rise. There are fears of further casualties.
At least 10 people are reported to have been injured in Dujiangyan city when rows of houses collapsed. A spokesman for the provincial seismological bureau told Xinhua more people were feared injured or dead.
The death toll is expected to rise, Deng Changwen, a spokesman for the Sichuan provincial seismological bureau, was quoted as saying by Xinhua He also said that because of the large earthquake, all communication to the disaster area has been cut off, exacerbating official attempts to determine the real situation
“This is a very dangerous earthquake,” said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake has the potential to cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers, he said. In addition, the earthquake was relatively shallow, Presgrave said, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones.
Forty-four aftershocks have been reported since the quake, which was the strongest to hit Sichuan province in more than 30 years, Xinhua reports. The area where Monday’s earthquake struck lies on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau.
Xinhua reporters in Chengdu said they saw cracks on the walls of some residential buildings in the downtown area, but no building collapsed.
Telecom networks in the cities of Chengdu, Chongqing and Zhengzhou are paralyzed after the quake. People complained they were unable to complete calls on either fixed lines or cell phones.
Aftershocks were felt in Chengdu within hours after the earthquake. And cracks were seen in the walls of some buildings.
In Zhengzhou, capital of central Henan Province, people rushed out of homes and offices.
Many said they felt dizzy and saw the ceiling light fixtures swinging back and forth.
In Lanzhou, capital of the northwestern Gansu Province, the quake set off alarms of many parked cars by the roadside.
Xinhua reporters in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, said they felt their office building rocking back and forth for about four minutes.
The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand.
Compiled by Tenzin Chodon.
