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Deadly Earthquake In China's Yunnan Province

Rescue teams are scrambling to find survivors of an earthquake that rocked southern China on Sunday and that Chinese officials say killed at least 398 people and injured at least 1,800 others.

NPR's Frank Langfitt reports from Shanghai that heavy rain and aftershocks — the U.S. Geological Survey has reported four stronger than magnitude 4.5, according to The Associated Press — are hampering efforts to bring aid to survivors.

CCTV footage compiled by The Associated Press.

The earthquake caused landslides that blocked many roads and rivers, and Frank reports that the damming of one river has created a lake that is rising more than 3 feet per hour, forcing residents of a nearby village to flee.


AP reports via the official Xinhua news agency that firefighters had rescued 32 trapped residents, while also recovering 43 bodies. 

(Information added to story at 11:31 a.m.)


The Yunnan Civil Affairs Department says 

that 230,000 people so far have been evacuated from their homes

, and that more than 57,000 in the hardest-hit area may still need evacuation, according to Xinhua. Doctors there are reporting severe shortages of medicine and unmanageable conditions.


that an intensive rescue effort will be required

. "[We can] never give up until the last minute," he said.


One rescue volunteer told the AP that along the road from Zhaotong to Longtou, at least half the buildings had collapsed.

The region is not new to severe earthquakes, the AP reports. "In 1970, a magnitude-7.7 earthquake in Yunnan killed at least 15,000 people, and a magnitude-7.1 quake killed more than 1,400 in 1974," the news service adds. "In September 2012, 81 people died and 821 were injured in a series of quakes in the region."


Still, many homes in the impoverished region around the epicenter 

, according to Xinhua — and vulnerable to earthquakes.
The U.S. Geological Survey put Sunday's quake at a magnitude 6.1, while China measured it at 6.5.  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Disasters

Christopher Dean Hopkins

Author

The earthquake caused landslides that blocked many roads and rivers, and the damming of one river has created a lake that is rising more than three feet per hour, forcing residents of a nearby village to flee.

Storms, aftershocks hurt rescue efforts following deadly China quake

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