Gansu earthquake kills more than 100
Magnitude-6.2 event China’s worst such disaster since 2014, officials say
More than 100 people died when a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck the northwestern province of Gansu on Monday night, authorities said yesterday morning.
Official reports said 113 people died and 536 were injured while 14 people also died in neighbouring Qinghai province. More than 155,000 houses were damaged in Gansu.
President Xi Jinping asked authorities to make every effort to treat the injured, repair infrastructure and resettle affected residents.
It was China’s deadliest earthquake since one that killed 617 people in Yunnan province in August 2014.
Firefighters were on the scene to provide relief, and the People’s Liberation Army flew an emergency command group to the disaster area yesterday morning.
Gansu authorities said roads and rail lines damaged in the quake were back in service by yesterday morning, but some trains were delayed.
The Ministry of Water Resources said efforts were under way to repair water supply lines.
The quake struck at 11.59pm on Monday, with the epicentre in a township in Jishishan, 102km from the provincial capital Lanzhou. Several regions in western and central China reported tremors.
By yesterday morning, nine aftershocks of magnitude 3 or higher had been recorded, Gansu authorities said.
Aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher were possible in the coming days.
Residents interviewed by Shanghai-based online media outlet the Paper yesterday said many people were asleep when the quake struck and did not have time to take shelter. It quoted a woman 90km from the epicentre who said her house collapsed and she escaped being buried because she was still awake.
Minimum temperatures in Jishishan county were around minus 10 degrees Celsius early yesterday morning because of a cold wave that hit much of China.
Media reports said there was a lack of heating equipment in the quake-hit areas. Beijing-based magazine China Newsweek quoted a responder as saying the low temperatures could make rescues more difficult.
Videos and photos circulating on social media showed firefighting crews trying to pull out residents buried under rubble, and others showed quake victims taking shelter on a road while wrapped in quilts.
State broadcaster CCTV reported that silt had washed into a village in Qinghai province near Gansu after the earthquake, stranding residents. Thirteen people from the village were missing.
The National Health Commission has sent medical experts from top hospitals to the disaster area to provide support, according to CCTV.
Gansu province’s top two officials – provincial Communist Party secretary Hu Changsheng and Governor Ren Zhenhe – also headed to the disaster area early yesterday.
Both a State Council office in charge of disaster relief and the Ministry of Emergency Management, responsible for disaster responses, sent working groups to the affected areas.
The Ministry of Emergency Management and the Ministry of Finance jointly released 200 million yuan (HK$222 million) in relief funds.
The China Earthquake Networks Centre said preliminary analysis showed that the quake was the latest of three of magnitude 6 or higher that had struck within 200km of the epicentre since 1900.
The Hong Kong government said it had not received any request for help from city residents in Gansu.
It said it would discuss with mainland authorities whether to send rescue teams.
“We will pay close attention to the situation and contact local rescue organisations to apply for our Disaster Relief Fund to provide appropriate assistance to our compatriots in need. As it is winter time, it is very cold in Gansu so rescue efforts cannot be delayed,” Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki said.
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu offered his condolences to the families of those killed.
Lee added that he had instructed the Hong Kong government to liaise with disaster relief organisations and provide appropriate support through the Disaster Relief Fund.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ingwen also offered her condolences, saying the island “stands ready to offer assistance”.
Similar sentiments came from embassies in Beijing, including those of the United States, Canada, Japan and France.
Researchers expected an earthquake to strike hours before the deadly 6.2 magnitude quake in Gansu – but were unable to say where it would happen.
More than 120 people have died since the quake struck just before midnight on Monday, with the epicentre in a township located in the autonomous county of Jishishan.
Predicting earthquakes has almost appeared to be a mission impossible, with most equipment only able to give a few seconds’ warning once it has started.
Researchers in Shaanxi have developed a groundbreaking technique that has allowed them to forecast successfully every earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 or more that has struck around the globe in the past 10 years.
But to their dismay, there is still no way to predict the location of these earthquakes.
The team uses high-precision equipment to monitor the Earth’s gravitational field at low frequencies, looking for abnormalities in gravitational waves that could be a warning sign an earthquake is imminent.
The researchers first realised that the latest earthquake was on the way when they received a text alert about abnormal data readings from multiple sensors on Friday morning.
The team then began discussing where the earthquake might strike and, in the afternoon before it struck, Zhang Maosheng, a professor and dean at Xian Jiaotong University, was thinking: “We need to forecast a location as soon as possible.”
By this point, the team had calculated that the earthquake had a high probability of hitting within three to five days of the abnormal data readings being recorded.
They were also able to predict that the magnitude of the earthquake would be around 6.27 based on the strength of the data peaks observed, Zhang said.
But they could not forecast that the earthquake was about to happen in a province bordering theirs. “[We] didn’t think it would be this close,” Zhang said.
The researchers have been able to detect early warning signs of multiple quakes, including the devastating Turkey-Syria earthquake that struck in February, and published details of their precursor monitoring method and forecasting results in the journal Northwestern Geology in June.
Four days before the Gansu earthquake hit, the team recorded abnormal gravitational wave readings at four different sensor locations around Shaanxi.
Although the sensors were located in different cities, the anomalous waves were all recorded at nearly the same time, something which indicated they were travelling at the speed of light, said Liu Huaqiang, a professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian.
While gravitational disturbances from other sources could cause abnormal data readings, gravitational earthquake waves characteristically travelled at the speed of light “so it wasn’t hard to understand whether this was an earthquake precursor”, Liu said.
After studying nearly 500 earthquakes over the past two years, the team could now estimate the magnitude and a time frame for when the earthquake might occur, Zhang said.
But the final piece of the puzzle they now need to crack is where the quake will strike.
“The only aspect we cannot determine is the location,” Liu said.
One idea for how to solve this problem was to place sensors all around the world and use the difference in time it takes for the waves to hit different gravimeters to help pinpoint a location.
Zhang said if the team was able to begin pinpointing the locations of earthquakes once they saw an abnormal data reading, they hoped to share their findings for global use.