The 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck the sparsely populated Dingri township, located near the Sino-Nepal border, at 9:05 a.m. (2:05 a.m. in Switzerland), according to China’s national earthquake agency (CENC). The American Geological Survey (USGS) for its part reported an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 in the region.
Videos broadcast by Chinese public television CCTV show white-colored homes at high altitude, with gutted walls and collapsed roofs, with numerous stones littering the ground.
Other images from the television channel show firefighters in helmets and orange outfits heading towards the scene of the disaster, or even SUVs in a street, buried under bricks from the affected buildings.
Many replicas
“Fifty-three people died and 62 others were injured,” said the official Xinhua news agency (state media), quoting the authorities. A previous report reported 32 dead and 38 injured.
“The tremors were very strongly felt in and around Dingri canton and many buildings collapsed near the epicenter,” CCTV said. She reported “multiple aftershocks” since Tuesday morning, the largest being magnitude 4.4.
Xinhua reported that local authorities were visiting the canton’s various communes “to assess the repercussions of the earthquake.” Temperatures there are around -8 degrees Celsius during the day and could drop to -18 degrees tonight, according to China’s National Meteorological Bureau.
This high altitude canton has around 62,000 inhabitants and is located not far from the Chinese side of Everest.
“It shook pretty hard here.”
While earthquakes are common in the region, Tuesday’s quake was the most powerful recorded within a 200-kilometer radius in the last five years, the CENC said.
In Nepal, in addition to Kathmandu, the areas around Namche and Lobuche, very close to the Everest base camp, were also hit by the earthquake and its aftershocks.
“It shook quite hard here. Everyone is awake, but we are not aware of any damage at the moment,” said an official in the Namche region in northeastern Nepal.
The Himalayas lie on the divide between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates and experience regular seismic activity. In 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and injured more than 22,000 in Nepal, destroying more than 500,000 homes.
A major earthquake occurred in December 2023 in northwest China and left 148 dead and thousands homeless in Gansu province (northwest).
