China’s northwestern Qinghai province was hit by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake at 5:06 pm local time on Tuesday, followed by seven significant tremors in the span of just 40 minutes. Local officials reported considerable property damage, one death, and four injuries.
Qinghai province is noted for its coal mines, some of which are operated illegally, with low standards for safety and environmental protection. Since the epicenter of the initial earthquake on Tuesday was monitored at 10 kilometers underground, the coal mines were evacuated.
“After the quake, the office of the State Council earthquake relief headquarters and the Ministry of Emergency Management launched a Level 4 national emergency response. They dispatched a working group to the area to guide response work,” the state-run newspaper China Daily reported.
Emergency Management Minister Zhang Chengzhong “urged all-out efforts to search for and rescue trapped people, allocate relief supplies, assist and relocate affected residents, and strengthen earthquake monitoring, tracking and analysis.”
The China Earthquake Administration also declared a Level 3 emergency. Chinese agencies use a four-step scale with Level 1 being the worst of disasters, so Level 3 and 4 alerts are consistent with localized threats that could require some assistance from the central government. The China Earthquake Administration seemed to be more concerned than the Emergency Management Ministry about potential further tremors and aftershocks.
According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, the national government has “allocated 10,000 central disaster relief supplies including tents, folding beds, quilts, blankets, household emergency kits and emergency lighting lamps, to Qinghai,” along with dozens of vehicles, hundreds of rescue workers, and ten search-and-rescue dogs.
The area struck by the quake is a mountainous region on the Tibetan plateau, with an average altitude of around 13,000 feet, making rescue efforts and damage assessment difficult. Local news media reported that transportation, communication, water, and power near the epicenter of the quake were operating normally as of Tuesday night.
As of Wednesday morning, geologists said there were a total of a dozen aftershocks to the Tuesday afternoon quake, one of which reached magnitude 4.9.
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