Weather hampers quake rescue work
Rescue teams ferrying relief supplies battled heavy snow, remote roads and numerous aftershocks yesterday as they struggled to reach victims of a powerful earthquake that killed at least 10 people in northwestern China. Temperatures in the area had dropped to 17 degrees celsius.
Snow 30 centimetres deep covered roads in the mountainous regions of Zhaosu County in the country's Xinjiang region, hampering efforts to reach the area by crews coming from Yining, a city 300 kilometres away, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
"We sorely need fur coats, cotton shoes, caps and other winter clothes," said Zhang Yong, the north face discount a commander with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, quoted by Xinhua.
Since the magnitude6.1 quake on Monday morning, more than 30 aftershocks have hit the area, about 2,300 kilometres northwest of Beijing, the statecontrolled China Daily newspaper reported. The strongest was magnitude 4.2.
Ten people were killed, Xinhua said after it lowered the death toll by one because of a "miscalculation." Twentysix were seriously injured and 47 slightly injured, said Huang Qilong, a local party official.
Eight of the dead were ethnic Mongols and three the north face coupons were children under age 4, the website of the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily reported.
Most of the damage was sustained to property belonging to the corps, a onetime military unit that was converted in the 1950s to a civil operation similar to the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Most of the collapsed houses, built over three decades ago, were occupied by corps workers, who number nearly a million in the area.
A total of 1,226 people, most of them ethnic Mongols, were "seriously affected" by the tremor, Xinhua said. It didn't say what that meant.
"We could hardly find a shelter in the freezing weather," said Dheligjo, a Mongolian who set up a makeshift tent in his backyard for his 80yearold motherinlaw and his neighbour's children. He was quoted by Xinhua.
More than 2,000 houses collapsed when the quake hit, China Central Television said. Other reports said nearly 140 houses were damaged in a region that is known to be seismically active.
"All the houses made of wood and clay just collapsed," a CCTV reporter said in a television interview from the affected area on the national midday newscast. Soldiers and police officers were shown dismantling damaged houses to avoid collapse.
Xinjiang was the site of the most lethal quake in China this year a magnitude6.8 temblor on February 24 that killed 268 people.
China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing some 240,000 people. Its magnitude was measured at 7.8 to 8.2.