AKSU, 23 Jan: A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck a sparsely populated part of China\u2019s western Xinjiang region early Tuesday, killing three people and causing extensive damage in freezing cold weather, officials said. It was the latest in a series of temblors and natural disasters to hit the country\u2019s west.
\nThe quake rocked Uchturpan county in Aksu prefecture shortly after 2 a.m., the China Earthquake Networks Center said. Rescue crews were rushed to the area, with about 1,000 on hand by midday. By evening, authorities said three people have died and five were injured in the county, which is also called Wushi in the Mandarin language spoken by most Chinese.
\nRescue crews combed through the rubble, overturning bricks and stone blocks in search of victims. Emergency survival gear \u2014 including coats, tents and folding beds to help the thousands of people who fled their homes \u2014 had arrived or were on their way, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
\nAlthough the quake was strong, its epicenter was located in a sparsely populated mountainous area some 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) above sea level, Zhang Yongjiu, the head of Xinjiang Earthquake Administration told a news conference on Tuesday night.
\n\u201cThis 7.1 rating is very strong, but the death and injury situation is not severe,\u201d Zhang said.
\nLiu Jinhua, who runs an advertising company in Aksu, rushed out of his apartment in the middle of the night with his wife and kids in their pajamas as the quake shook their building.
\n\u201cI was … awoken by my wife and didn\u2019t know what was wrong. I just wanted my family to evacuate safely,\u201d he said.
\nOf the five hurt, two had serious injuries. Among the more than 120 buildings damaged, 47 houses collapsed, 78 houses were damaged and some greenhouses were reduced to plastic sheets and rubble, the government of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region posted on its official Weibo social media account.
\nOfficials also pointed out that most of the houses that collapsed were in remote areas and were mainly built by the residents themselves. The new public housing recently built by the government there did not collapse.
\nThe quake downed power lines but electricity was quickly restored, Aksu authorities reported. The mountainous Uchturpan county had around 233,000 people in 2022, according to Xinjiang authorities.
\nUrumqi Railroad Bureau resumed services after 7 a.m. following safety checks that confirmed no problems on the train lines. The suspension had affected 23 trains, the bureau serving the Xinjiang capital said on its official Weibo account.
\nThe U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured 7.0 magnitude and occurred in the seismically active Tian Shan mountain range. It said the area\u2019s largest quake in the past century was also magnitude 7.1 and occurred in 1978, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) to the north of Tuesday\u2019s quake struck.
\nMultiple aftershocks were recorded, the strongest of them measured at 5.3 magnitude.
\nThe rural area is populated mostly by Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnicity that is predominantly Muslim and has been the target of a state campaign of forced assimilation and mass detention. The region is heavily militarized and state broadcaster CCTV showed paramilitary troops moving in before dawn to clear rubble and set up tents for those displaced.
\nUchturpan county is recording temperatures well below freezing, with lows down to negative 18 degrees C (just below zero F) forecast by the China Meteorological Administration this week.
\nIn Yunnan province in China\u2019s southwest, rescue workers were still searching for victims in 18 homes buried by a landslide Monday in the village of Liangshui. State media reported that 20 bodies had been recovered, while 24 others remained missing, though it was unclear when and where exactly those affected were registered. Three who survived were pulled from their homes that were covered in rocks and mud in freezing cold and falling snow.
\nThe tremors from Tuesday\u2019s earthquake were felt hundreds of kilometers (miles) away.
\nMa Shengyi, a 30-year-old pet shop owner living in Tacheng, 600 kilometers (373 miles) from the epicenter, said her dogs started barking before she felt her apartment building shudder. The quake was so strong her neighbors ran downstairs. Ma rushed to her bathroom and started to cry.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s no point in running away if it\u2019s a big earthquake,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI was scared to death.\u201d
\nChandeliers swung, buildings were evacuated and a media office building near the epicenter shook for a full minute, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. A video posted by a Chinese internet user on Weibo showed residents standing outside on the streets bundled in winter jackets, and a photo posted by CCTV showed a cracked wall with chunks fallen off.
\nTremors were felt across the Xinjiang region and in the neighboring countries Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In the Kazakh capital of Almaty, people left their homes, the Russian news agency Tass reported. In both Xinjiang and Kazak-hstan, classes were sus-pended to allow children to recover from the shock. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AKSU, 23 Jan: A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck a sparsely populated part of China\u2019s western Xinjiang region early Tuesday, killing three people and causing extensive damage in freezing cold weather, officials said. It was the latest in a series of temblors and natural disasters to hit the country\u2019s west. The quake rocked Uchturpan county in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-233129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}