Soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army dug through the rubble for survivors last night after one of China’s worst earthquakes in decades devastated a remote region along the Silk Road, killing at least 257 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.
Authorities said the quake, which measured 6,8 on the Richter scale, had destroyed more than 1 000 buildings, including schools and clinics, in the Xinjiang region close to China’s northwest border with Kyrgyzstan.
Troops and police in the heavily garrisoned area joined survivors in a desperate search for loved ones, while imams began burying the victims from the predominantly Muslim local population.
Among the worst hit was Bachu county, where 158 were killed, many crushed or buried while they were eating their breakfast. Others died in neighbouring Jiashi county and the shock was felt as far away as Kashgar city.
”The dead included the old and the young, even some babies,” said Mimati, a local government official. ”Survivors and injured people were digging in the debris around their collapsed houses with bleeding hands, calling the names of missing relatives.”
Many buildings in an area of goat herders and farmers were unable to withstand the shock. Homes, particularly in the Uighur villages on the arid Tibetan plateau, are built of mud bricks dried in the sun.
About a dozen students were killed when their secondary school collapsed in the county’s most badly damaged town, Chongku Qiake, officials said. Two pupils were found in the rubble of a primary school.
”If you ask me how many people have been injured, I can only use the word countless at the moment,” an official from Han Chubai told Reuters. ”Hospitals in the village and the county have been full. I can hear ambulances driving by all the time outside the window.”
Zhou Mingcheng, a mill manager in Bachu county, said his family escaped as their home collapsed around them.
”We were sleeping at the time, and it was still dark. We ran out immediately when it began to shake,” he said. ”Lots of rooms here collapsed. Lots of people are outside now and no one dares stay at home.”
Aftershocks as high as 5 on the Richter scale continued throughout the day. At Chongku Qiake, so many houses were damaged that 90% of the town’s 30,000 people had to sleep outdoors last night in temperatures as low as -10C.
The authorities struggled to cope with a disaster that is unusual in the arid plains of western China, an area frequently rattled by quakes but rarely to such deadly effect.
The central government released emergency funds for relief and dispatched a team to the region headed by the vice-minister for civil affairs.
According to the news agency Xinhua, the Chinese Red Cross was preparing to send 2 000 quilts and 1 000 coats for those left homeless.
Officials in Urumqi and Bachu began providing grain, milk and blankets to the five hardest-hit villages in the county. Local people collected donations of bread, water and instant noodles.
Although the army and the police joined rescue efforts, bulldozers and other heavy equipment were in short supply. Most rescuers were still working by hand last night.
Following the traditions of the Muslim Uighur ethnic group, many families were keen to bury their lost relatives on the day of their deaths, but locals said there were not enough imams to do the job.
China has frequent earthquakes, but officials said yesterday’s was the worst to hit the Xinjiang region at least since the 1949 revolution.
An earthquake in January 1997 killed 50 in Xinjiang. Nine people were killed in a quake there in April that year.
The country’s worst disaster in recent times was an earthquake measuring 7,9 on the Richter scale that devastated Tangshan near Beijing in 1976, killing at least 250 000 people. – Guardian Unlimited Â