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14 die, hundreds injured in China earthquake

BEIJING: At least 14 people died, hundreds more were injured and thousands of houses collapsed when a magnitude-5.7 earthquake struck near a popular tourist destination in east China on Saturday, officials said.

The quake, the biggest in the region in half a century, could be felt in cities hundreds of kilometres away when it hit at 8:49am, according to the China National Seismic Observation Network.

“We’d just finished our breakfast, when we heard a huge roar, like someone setting off really loud firecrackers,” said a Civil Affairs official in the city of Ruichang in Jiangxi province. “Then, the houses started shaking, and we just jumped outside,” the official, surnamed Liu, said.

Seven hours after the quake, official media reported that 14 were confirmed dead, while more than 370 had been injured, 20 of them seriously. Hundreds of thousands of people were also reported to have fled their homes, fearing further quakes.

The epicentre was near the city of Jiujiang, home to half a million people and a traditional scenic spot that was praised by Tang dynasty poets more than a millennium ago. Thousands of rural homes were flattened in the quake, one official said.

The US Geological Survey said that the quake occurred about 10 kilometres below the surface of the earth. That makes it a so-called “shallow” earthquake, similar to the devastating quake that struck Pakistan in October 8, a category of tremor generally known to cause greater damage than deeper ones.

In the first hours after the disaster struck, local officials struggled to assess the human toll exacted in their respective areas.

The State Seismic Bureau said that five had been killed in Ruichang city, seven in Jiujiang and two more in Wuxue, a city in neighboring Hubei province, Xinhua News Agency reported.

A relatively powerful aftershock was felt at about 12:55pm.

In and around Ruichang, a total of 420,000 people had left their homes, apparently fearing that the morning’s earthquake might not be the last, according to Xinhua’s website. “Basically, everyone in Ruichang is right now out huddling in the street,” said Liu, the Civil Affairs official. “I guess that by nightfall, we may need tents and blankets for them.”

The International Red Cross had sent 500 tents to the disaster region, and would dispatch another 2,000 on Sunday, the website sina.com said.

In Beijing, the Civil Affairs Ministry was getting ready to send emergency relief supplies to the affected region, while a specialist earthquake taskforce left the capital around mid-day, according to Xinhua.

Shock waves could be felt as far away as Wuhan, a large industrial city on the Yangtze River more than 100 kilometres away, sina.com reported.

The website carried photos reportedly taken in Wuhan early on Saturday, showing cracked walls and toppled mannequins inside shops. “It felt like someone was yanking you violently,” an Wuhan eyewitness told sina.com.

In the city of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province located 300 kilometres away, the tremor could also be felt, according to the China News Service. afp

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