Dozens of people were killed and hundreds of buildings collapsed after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck an area near one of Tibet’s holiest cities, near the Himalayan border with Nepal on Tuesday. Earthquake tremors were felt in Nepal.
Chinese state media reported the quake struck just after 9 a.m. in Tibet’s Dingri County at a depth of 6.2 miles. He said at least 95 people were killed and 130 were injured. State news agency Xinhua published video of police clearing debris and picking up debris.
China’s state broadcaster said more than 1,000 houses had collapsed in Dingri County, located at the northern foothills of Mount Everest.
Several tremors were felt in the region including Nepal. According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake’s magnitude was 7.1, although it was measured at 6.8 by the China Earthquake Network Center.
The nearest city to the epicenter was Shigatse, Tibet’s second-largest city, with a population of 640,000. Shigatse is considered a sacred site as the seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most senior figures in Tibetan Buddhism.
A tourist not far from Shigatse, speaking to The Times, said she was in her hotel room when the quake started shaking her building. She said the power went out and she and a friend sat between the beds. When the shaking stopped they ran out of the building.
The tourist, who gave only his surname Xu, shared a video showing several single-storey brick buildings with collapsed walls. Videos posted on Chinese social media showed debris strewn across roads, cars crushed by fallen bricks and roads left open due to landslides. Ms. Xu said she grabbed her down jacket before running out.
China’s top leader Xi Jinping ordered officials to minimize casualties and resettle survivors. Chinese authorities deployed 1,500 rescue teams and more than 250 vehicles for the search operation, which was underway in extremely cold conditions, where temperatures dropped as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius). In photos published by state media, rescue workers are seen digging out piles of debris from collapsed houses using ropes, shovels and working by hand.
There is a danger of powerful earthquakes in the Himalayan region. In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people in Nepal. In Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, people came out of their homes due to shaking of buildings due to earthquake in the morning.
At least two people, one in Kathmandu and the other in Sindhupalchowk, a district north of Kathmandu, were slightly injured by the earthquake, according to Nepalese police.
Nepal dispatched more than 2,500 police officers to assess the damage and search for victims.
“Depending on the intensity of the earthquake, there may be some damage in the mountains of eastern Nepal,” said Lok Bijay Adhikari, senior seismologist at Nepal’s National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Centre.
Most of the residents of Nepal’s high mountain areas like Everest, Makalu, Rolwaling and Kanchenjunga have moved to lower areas to escape the extreme cold of winter.
“Although most people move to lower ground during the winter season, some are still there,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, former head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association. “There is always a risk of flooding after an earthquake due to avalanches and glacial lake outbursts.”
berry wang Contributed to the reporting.