 |
| Photo Credit: Xinhua News via AP. |
BEIJING (AP) — At least 46 people were reported killed and 16 missing in a 6.8 magnitude earthquake that shook China’s southwestern province of Sichuan on Monday, triggering landslides and shaking buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu, whose 21 million residents are already under a COVID-19 lockdown.
The quake
struck a mountainous area in Luding county shortly after noon, the China Earthquake
Networks Center said.
Sichuan,
which sits on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau where tectonic plates meet, is
regularly hit by earthquakes. Two quakes in June killed at least four people.
The death
toll rose to 46 with 16 missing as the search for trapped people continued
Monday night, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Earlier,
authorities had reported 7 deaths in Luding county and 14 more in neighboring
Shimian county to the south. Three of the dead were workers at the Hailuogou
Scenic Area, a glacier and forest nature reserve.
Along with
the deaths, authorities reported stones and soil falling from mountainsides,
causing damage to homes and power interruptions, CCTV said. One landslide
blocked a rural highway, leaving it strewn with rocks, the Ministry of
Emergency Management said.
Buildings
shook in Chengdu, 200 kilometers (125 miles) away from the epicenter. Resident
Jiang Danli said she hid under a desk for five minutes in her 31st floor
apartment. Many of her neighbors rushed downstairs, wary of aftershocks.
“There was a strong earthquake in June, but it
wasn’t very scary. This time I was really scared, because I live on a high
floor and the shaking made me dizzy,” she told The Associated Press.
The
earthquake and lockdown follow a heat wave and drought that led to water
shortages and power cuts due to Sichuan’s reliance on hydropower. That comes on
top of the latest major lockdown under China’s strict “zero-COVID” policy.
The past two
months in Chengdu “have been weird,” Jiang said.
The U.S.
Geological Survey recorded a magnitude of 6.6 for Monday’s quake at a
relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles). Preliminary measurements
by different agencies often differ slightly.
China’s
deadliest earthquake in recent years was a 7.9 magnitude quake in 2008 that
killed nearly 90,000 people in Sichuan. The temblor devastated towns, schools
and rural communities outside Chengdu, leading to a years-long effort to
rebuild with more resistant materials.