A powerful earthquake that occurred Tuesday in the Himalayan region of Tibet, in southwest China, left at least 53 dead, around sixty injured, and caused the collapse of “many buildings”. The 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck the sparsely populated canton of Dingri, located near the Sino-Nepalese border, at 9:05 a.m. (2:05 a.m. in Paris), according to the Chinese national earthquake agency (CENC).
The American Geological Survey (USGS) for its part reported an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 in the region. The epicenter of the earthquake was about 370 km southwest of the regional capital Lhasa, according to CENC data.
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 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.
“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.
Freezing temperatures
“Fifty-three people died and 62 others were injured,” said the official Xinhua news agency. A previous provisional report reported 32 deaths. New China specified that local authorities were going to the various communes of the canton “to assess the repercussions of the earthquake”. Temperatures there are around -8°C during the day and could drop to -18°C 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.
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 Jagat Prasad Bhusal, 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). The earthquake was the deadliest in China since 2014, when more than 600 people were killed in the country’s southwest province of Yunnan.
