BEIJING (AP) — A powerful earthquake jolted China’s Sichuan province Saturday near where a devastating quake struck five years ago, leaving at least 56 dead and more than 600 injured and prompting state media to warn of higher casualties.
The quake — measured by China’s seismological bureau at magnitude-7 and the U.S. Geological Survey at 6.6 — struck the steep hills of Lushan county shortly after 8 a.m. toppling buildings, many of them older brick structures. Tiles fell from roofs, and walls collapsed, sending people into the streets in their underwear and wrapped in blankets.
Rescue workers turned a square outside the Lushan’s county hospital into a triage center with medical personnel treating the wounded, according to footage on China Central Television.
Hard-hit parts of the county remained unreachable by road, with phone services cut off, but some text and Internet services continuing, state media said.
A person whose posts to a micro-blogging account “Qingyi Riverside” on Sina Corp.’s Twitter-like Weibo service carried a Lushan geotag said that many buildings collapsed buildings and that people could spot helicopters hovering above.
Aerial photos released by China’s military and shown on state television showed individual houses in ruins and some stretches of the county seat and villages flattened into rubble. The roofs of some taller buildings appeared to have slipped off exposing the floors beneath them.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported that 56 people died. Xu Mengjia, Communist Party secretary for Ya’an, which administers Lushan, told CCTV that more than 600 people were injured.
The quake’s shallow depth, less than 13 kilometers (8 miles), likely magnified the impact and CCTV showed footages from local security cameras shaking. The official Xinhua News Agency said that the quake rattled buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu 115 kilometers (70 miles), to the east. It caused the shutdown of the city’s airport for about an hour before reopening, state media said.
Lushan, where the quake struck, is home to 1.5 million people where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau. The area is near a well-known preserve for pandas, Bifengxia, which Xinhua said was not affected by the quake. Dozens of pandas were moved to Bifengxia from another preserve, Wolong, after its habitat was wrecked by the 2008 quake.
Xinhua reported that more than 2,000 soldiers were being sent to the disaster area, along with specialized crews to restore telecommunications. Premier Li Keqiang flew to Ya’an to direct rescue efforts, and he and President Xi Jinping ordered officials and rescuers to make saving people the top priority, Xinhua said.
Social media users who said they were in Lushan county posted photos of collapsed buildings and reported that water and electricity had been cut off. At least 10 aftershocks some of them at magnitude-5 or higher shook the area.
“It’s too dangerous,” said a person with the Weibo account Chengduxinglin and with a Lushan geotag.
“Even the aftershocks are scary.” The area lies near the same Longmenshan fault where the devastating 7.9-magnitude quake struck May 12, 2008, leaving more than 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead.
“It was just like May 12,” said Liu Xi, a writer in Ya’an city, who was jolted awake by Saturday’s quake. “All the home decorations fell at once, and the old house cracked.”
Friday, April 19, 2013
Friday Asia Update: Top Five Stories for the Week of April 19, 2013
1. China released a white paper on defense on Tuesday. The 2013 National Defense White Paper blamed Japan and the United States for the rise in tensions in the region (in so many words). It complained about neighboring countries for “making trouble over the Diaoyu islands,” referring to Japan. It also referenced the United States, saying, “some country has strengthened its Asia-Pacific military alliances, expanded its military presence in the region, and frequently makes the situation tenser.”
The white paper omitted any reference to a “no-first use” policy on nuclear weapons for the first time, a possible change in China’s nuclear policy. It is unclear what the significance of this omission is, though, as experts have questioned China’s commitment to this policy in the past.
2. Shifts in North Korea policy? China’s special envoy on North Korea, Wu Dawei, will travel to Washington, DC, next week for “an in-depth exchange of views” on the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The announcement comes after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Beijing and urged China to help convince the North to get rid of its nuclear weapons. Kerry has also indicated a readiness to talk with North Korea, as long as it takes steps toward denuclearization. Meanwhile, Pyongyang announced its own preconditions for resuming talks with Washington and Seoul, demanding the withdrawal of UN sanctions and the end of U.S.-South Korea military drills. North Korea’s willingness to discuss even the possibility of dialogue hopefully signals a desire to deescalate the tensions that have plagued the Korean Peninsula.
3. China GDP growth slows to 7.7 percent. New economic data in the first quarter of 2013 showed slower-than-expected growth that surprised analysts, who had forecasted growth of around 8 percent. It’s possible that even that number is inflated, given that there are strong incentives for local government officials to inflate their numbers for promotions; the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics only takes two weeks to compile its data, compared to six weeks in Hong Kong and eight weeks in the United States. For years, China’s stated goal was to secure 8 percent GDP growth, in a policy called “bao ba (保八),” or “protect the eight,” on the premise that the country needed that level of GDP growth to maintain domestic stability.
4. Bird flu fears increase. The numbers keep rising, as China has now confirmed ninety-one cases of H7N9 and raised the death toll to seventeen. Meanwhile, fears of human-to-human transmission have intensified—the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that 40 percent of people who have tested positive for H7N9 had no recent contact with poultry. Still, such fears seem premature, and the World Health Organization has stated that there is “no evidence of ongoing human-to-human transmission.”
5. Chinese national killed in Boston bombing. Lu Lingzi, a graduate student at Boston University from Shenyang, was confirmed as a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing issued visas to her parents, as well as to the parents of a second Chinese student injured in the attack. China’s new ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, stated that “We strongly condemn such an act of terror targeted at innocent civilians. We stand with the United States. We are ready to further our cooperation with the United States in fighting terror.”
Bonus: Rodman to return to North Korea, says Kim Jung-un just needs a hug. The basketball star is planning his second “diplomatic” visit to North Korea. Dennis Rodman claims that the most recent increase in tensions is because “[Kim] just wants to be loved. He just wants to sit down and talk. That’s all.” The Worm, as Rodman is affectionately known, also says he’s been approached by the FBI for insider information into the North Korean regime. In unrelated news, North Korea recently released its most hilarious propaganda video yet, claiming that Americans drink coffee made out of snow and that North Korean aid workers hand out cakes in the streets. Watch it here, dubbed in English. (Update: the video is a hoax, but the comedic factor remains. Enjoy!)
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