BEIJING: An earthquake in a sparsely populated region of southwest China killed one person, injured at least 324 others and flattened more than 10,000 houses, an official and state media said Friday.
A government relief official in Yao’an county, a mountainous area of picturesque Yunnan province where the quake hit, told AFP that one person had died and 328 were injured.
The US Geological Survey said the moderate 6.0-magnitude quake struck at 7:19 pm local time, Thursday at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres in Yunnan province, AFP reported.
The quake was centred 98 kilometres east-northeast of the city of Dali.
It was followed by eight aftershocks, driving residents outdoors during the warm night for fear of greater damage, China’s Xinhua news agency said.
More than 10,000 houses collapsed and over 30,000 others were damaged in six counties of Yunnan, it said. In a statement, the county government said 75,000 buildings had been damaged.
Provincial authorities rushed thousands of tents, quilts and other aid supplies to the relief agency headquarters in Yao’an county. More than 600 police officers were sent to the quake zone.
Some 30 people suffered severe injuries and were being treated at a hospital in Yao’an, Xinhua said.
The quake came after nearly 87,000 people were left dead or missing when a massive 8.0 magnitude earthquake shook Sichuan province in China’s mountainous southwest in May 2008.
The deadliest earthquake to strike China in over 30 years flattened entire cities and towns, while destroying schools, hospitals, homes, buildings and factories in nearly 50,000 villages.
Around 7,000 schools collapsed in that quake as neighbouring buildings stood intact, leading to the death of thousands of children and causing huge anger among grieving parents who blamed poor construction and official corruption.
Yunnan province where Thursday night’s quake hit is next to Sichuan, and lies on China’s southern border with Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
Yao’an county, the quake’s epicentre, has a population of 207,900 from 23 separate ethnic groups, according to the county government’s website.
The spectacular scenery and the ethnic diversity has led China’s government to promote the relatively unspoilt region as a tourist destination in recent years.
Southwest China as a whole is part of the boundary between two of the Earth’s tectonic plates, the Indian and Asian plates, whose constant collision has created the Himalayan mountains and Tibetan plateau.
