The pattern of earthquakes following other earthquakes in other parts of the world continues with news that a 7.1 earthquake hit a remote area of China, killing at least 400 people an injuring 1000. Here’s a CNN video report on the quake:
Russia Today offers this:
A magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck a remote mountainous region in western China today, killing at least 400 people and injuring about 10,000. The temblor occurred at 7:49 a.m. in Qinghai province, with its epicenter in Yushu county, an area populated mostly by Tibetans.
State television showed soldiers and police digging through the rubble to rescue people buried under their collapsed houses. A local official said more than 85 percent of the houses made of mud and wood were destroyed in Jiegu, the biggest town in the area located 20 miles from the epicenter. It had a population of 100,000, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
“The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic and full of inj
ured people, with many of them bleeding from their injuries,” the official told Xinhua.
Bloomberg:
President Hu Jintao, on a trip to Washington, called for an all-out effort to rescue victims in the province of Qinghai, sandwiched between the restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. Vice Premier Hui Liangyu arrived to oversee relief efforts in the mountainous region on the Tibetan Plateau, where temperatures were forecast to fall below freezing tonight.
Urgent assistance is needed to help at least 10,000 people injured after the quake struck at 7:49 a.m. local time, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. A 2008 tremblor that hit Sichuan province in May of 2008 killed about 90,000 people after buildings collapsed, sparking protests and accusations of corruption over sub-standard buildings.
State-broadcaster China Central Television showed footage of local residents digging through the rubble of collapsed building with their hands. Dozens of rescuers were shown fighting fire and smoke to reach eight people trapped under a collapsed hotel, the TV channel said. Many more people are still buried under the debris, Yushu prefecture’s Li told Xinhua.
Efforts “by every means” should be made to rescue those trapped, Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao said in a statement posted to central government’s Web site.
Are the earthquakes in the past few months ususual? Some experts say no:
A swarm of strong earthquakes hit China’s Qinghai province near Tibet early Wednesday morning, the strongest being a 7.1 that toppled an estimated 85% of homes in the impoverished rural area.
The China earthquake is the latest major quake of 2010, following the January magnitude 7.0 earthquake that demolished the country of Haiti, the 8.8 magnitude quake that hit Chile, and the relatively mild early morning 4.4 earthquake that startled people awake in Los Angeles and caused an estimated $100 million in damage.
The recent earthquakes have many people feeling earthquake anxiety and wondering if they are foretelling “The Big One” in the United States, which geologists say is inevitable.
But the U.S. Geological Survey insists the number of major quakes occurring has not increased in frequency, yet people continue to be unusually concerned. There is a widespread perception that something unusual is going on – a pervasive level of anxiety regarding the stability of the earth under our feet – something we normally take for granted.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.