More than 300 injured in southwest China quake
More than 300 injured in southwest China quake. Reports say more than 300 of people were injured and thousands of homes damaged by a 6.0 magnitude earthquake in southwest China’s Yunnan province on Thursday. A moderate earthquake rocked southwest China Thursday evening, injuring more than 300 people and collapsing 10,000 homes.
The magnitude-6.0 temblor, centered in Yunnan province’s Yao’an county, damaged another 30,000 homes, the Xinhua News Agency said. The earthquake struck at 7:19 pm in Guantun township, in a mountainous area about 200 km northwest of the provincial capital Kunming.
Thirty people suffered severe injuries, while the other 300 were slightly injured, Xinhua news agency said.
The quake was followed by eight aftershocks and the provincial civil affairs department was sending 4,500 tents, 3,000 quilts and other relief materials to Yao’an, Xinhua said.
Hundreds of police were dispatched to the disaster zone, it said.
Yunnan is a quake-prone, mountainous region that lies on China’s southern border with Thailand and Myanmar. It also borders Sichuan province, where a magnitude-7.9 quake last year left almost 90,000 people dead or missing.
In 1988, a 7.1-magnitude quake in Yunnan near Myanmar killed more than 930 people. More than 15,000 people died after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake in the province in 1970, though authorities at the time covered up information on casualties and damage amid the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
