A massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake punched China today, toppling nearly all the buildings in one village and coming some 90 days before the Olympic Games begin in Beijing:

China’s worst earthquake in nearly three decades killed nearly 9,000 people Monday. The Chinese government, sensitive to accusations it did not move quickly enough in previous disasters, immediately launched a massive relief effort.

The 7.8-magnitude quake trapped nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school and devastated a hilly region in Sichuan and nearby provinces. The official Xinhua News Agency said 8,533 people died in Sichuan and dozens of other deaths were reported elsewhere.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao boarded a plane within hours of the quake and later arrived in the provincial capital of Chengdu. Thousands of army troops and paramilitary People’s Armed Police carrying medical supplies were also headed to the region, state television said.

The suddenness and terror of the earthquake can be seen in this You Tube video taken during the earthquake (h/t The Huffington Post):

The terror, destruction and death it brought was reportedly terrible to behold:

Xinhua said 80% of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the quake, raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply.

A chemical plant collapsed in Shifang city, to the northeast of the quake’s epicenter, burying hundreds of people and sending more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia leaking from the site, state media reported.

The earthquake sent thousands of people rushing out of buildings and into the streets hundreds of miles away in Beijing and Shanghai. The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.

The quake posed a challenge to a government already grappling with discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August.

It hit about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full. There were several smaller aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its website.

The temblor struck hilly country leading up to the Tibetan highlands, toppling buildings in small cities and towns in the largely rural area. About 1,200 pandas — 80% of the surviving wild population in China — live in several mountainous areas of Sichuan.

According to the Christian Science Monitor’s correspondent on the scene, China’s military moved swiftly to deal with the crisis:

Beijing - As the death toll from Monday’s earthquake mounted, China threw its Army into rescue operations – reflecting the priority that Beijing has increasingly put on efficient disaster relief.

The country appears to be well prepared for such an operation, says Roger Musson, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh. “They are very good at putting together a disaster relief plan rather quickly.”

More than 6,000 soldiers and militarized police were dispatched to the disaster area, carrying out standing orders in the event of an earthquake, a military spokesman said.

The next few days will reveal to what extent buildings in this part of central China were equipped to withstand a disaster such as this – the country’s deadliest since 1976 with at least 8,500 dead as of press time.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who flew to Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, less than two hours after the quake hit, told reporters en route that government leaders have “asked officials at all levels to be at the front line of the fighting the earthquake and lead the people in their rescue work.”

“I believe we can certainly overcome the disaster with the public and the military working together,” he added in a televised statement.

The Telegraph reports that some details about the earthquake are now filtering out from a source once unheard of in Communist China: citizen journalists:

The news of the Sichuan earthquake apparently broke first on Twitter.com, a website whose users constantly update the world on what is happening around them.

Links to maps showing the epicentre of the quake were posted alongside accounts of shaking buildings and evacuated offices from Chengdu, Shanghai and Beijing.

“Breathing normal again, feeling an earthquake on the 31stfloor was not fun,” wrote Ana from Shanghai.

Videos of children hiding under desks and of the thousands of office workers congregating outside their buildings soon made their way onto YouTube, while a rolling account of the day’s events was soon up on Shanghaiist, a Shanghai city website.

Shanghaiist posted 90 updates to the story, and started a rumour that the authorities had prior warning of the earthquake which provoked an official rebuke and more chatter across blogs.

The website gathered together material as diverse as reports that spy satellite images of the region were being used in the rescue operation, to the fact that Monday was Buddha’s birthday, to a posting about how people killed in the earthquake were “victims of China’s economic miracle.”

NBC’s correspondent has an extensive first person account that needs to be read in full. Here’s part of the beginning:

I noticed the swinging leaves on our office manager’s desk when she pointed out her plant to me and asked me if I felt the earthquake. Her eyes were wide open and her hands were on her chest. I told her I didn’t feel anything, but I couldn’t help giving a quick glance on our ceiling lamp-it obviously swayed for a few seconds.

In a few minutes our freelance producer Steven called in, told us there were hundreds of people evacuating from office buildings to the street, causing a small traffic in the main road of Beijing.

News started popping up on major websites: a quake measured at magnitude 7.5 struck western China, shaking buildings in cities as far away as Beijing and the business hub of Shanghai. The quake struck 57 miles (92 kilometers) northwest of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu at 2:28 p.m. (0628 GMT). The 7.5-magnitude quake was centered 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) below the surface.

7.5 magnitude is absolutely an appalling level to Chinese people, who two years ago just had the 30th anniversary of the greatest earthquake in the northern city of Tangshan in 1976. Over 240,000 people were killed in that 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the second largest death toll in a single earthquake in modern history.

More news and images caught up at a frightening speed. Schools buildings fell down with hundreds of children buried underneath. Chemical plants collapsed, causing tons of liquid ammonia to leak. Cracks showed up in buildings. Water tower was toppled. In a village in northern Sichuan alone, 80% of buildings were destroyed. Electricity was out and no phone calls could be made to the quake zone. Death toll climbed up gradually from ten to a hundred to hundreds, then thousands.

Read it all.