Sichuan earthquake kills 12, hurts 134
BEIJING: The toll from a strong 6.0-magnitude earthquake in southwest China rose to 12 dead and 134 injured yesterday as rescuers pulled bodies and survivors from wrecked buildings.
More than 4,000 people were relocated as a large number of structures were damaged or collapsed following late Monday’s earthquake outside Yibin in Sichuan province, according to the city government.
State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of rescuers bringing a survivor out of the rubble of a building on a stretcher overnight. Other images showed a woman being helped out of another collapsed structure.
Images from Changning county showed an electricity pole knocked down on the roof of a building, a hole in a brick home and broken windows on the street.
Cracks appeared in several roads and a major highway connecting Yibin and Xuyong county was closed, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Mud and rock slipped from the side of a hill, blocking a road and wrapping around a truck, according to CCTV footage.
More than 10,000 rooms within an undisclosed number of buildings were moderately damaged while 12 collapsed, according to Yibin authorities. The homes of more than 4,000 families were damaged in Gong county.
An early warning alarm system was triggered in the provincial capital Chengdu about one minute before the earthquake struck, Xinhua said. The alert rang 10 seconds before it hit Yibin.
Nine people died in Changning county and three others in Qixian county, the Yibin city government said in its Twitter-like Weibo account, up from an initial death toll of six overnight.
Rescuers pulled six bodies and seven survivors from buildings, it said.