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Western China quake toll rises to 589 | The death toll from the earthquake that struck the Qinghai Plateau in Tibet rose to 589 on Thursday morning and more than 10,000 injured. According to reports filed by
Xinhua and The China Daily, Wednesday’s earthquake measured 7.1 on the Richter
scale and was said to be the strongest to hit the country in nearly two years.
Reports said that the number of casualties is expected to rise further. The earthquake
struck at 7:49 a.m., and left many people buried under the debris in hardest-hit
Yushu, a remote Tibetan autonomous prefecture where the average elevation is around
4,000 meters above sea level. The quake and a string of aftershocks, the biggest
being 6.3 magnitude, toppled houses, temples, gas stations and electric poles,
triggered landslides, damaged roads, cut power supplies and disrupted telecommunications.
A reservoir also developed cracks, which workers are trying to patch. Chinese
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have ordered local authorities to spare
no effort in search and rescue operations, and in the caring of the victims. Vice-Premier
Hui Liangyu has arrived in the quake-hit region to supervise rescue operations.
Many are still trapped under the debris of collapsed houses in Gyegu town, which
is near the epicenter of the earthquake, said Huang Limin, deputy secretary-general
of the prefecture government. Gyegu, or Jiegu, is the seat of the Yushu prefecture
government and has a population of 100,000. Xiao Yuping, the deputy chief of the
Yushu education bureau, said a total of 56 students and five teachers were killed,
with another 40 students trapped in the rubble. He said a vocational school suffered
most casualties, with 22 students killed, 20 of them girls. He said half of the
school buildings in the prefecture collapsed. But China National Radio quoted
a local Red Cross official as saying 70 percent of schools had been destroyed.
Shi Huajie, chief of the armed police force unit in the prefecture, said in the
absence of heavy equipment, most rescue workers were using their hands to sift
through the rubble looking for survivors. Over 5,000 additional rescuers, including
soldiers and medical workers, have been dispatched to the quake-hit region, according
to the Qinghai provincial government. Authorities in the neighboring provinces
of Gansu and Sichuan and the Tibet autonomous region have also sent rescue workers
to Yushu. |
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