Greenwire: A strong earthquake that struck China’s western Qinghai province has left at least 400 people dead and injured 10,000, Chinese state media reported.
The quake occurred in a region that is rich in natural gas and has deposits of copper, tin and coal. The 7.1 magnitude earthquake damaged 90 percent of the homes in the county seat, Jeigu, to collapse, seismologist Gu Guohua said. Many of the houses were made of wood, mud and brick.
Twenty schoolchildren are still missing, buried in the wreckage of a primary school, and as many as 50 people are trapped beneath a collapsed office building that included offices for the Departments of Commerce and Industry.
Workers today scrambled to release water from a reservoir after the quake caused cracks in a dam, according to the China Earthquake Administration.
As the day went on, 18 aftershocks measuring more than 6.0 pummeled the region, Xinhua reported (Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, April 14). – DFM