A powerful earthquake occurred Tuesday in the Himalayan region of Tibet, in southwest China. Earlier this Tuesday morning, the China New news agency reported at least 53 dead and 62 injured. The earthquake caused the collapse of “many buildings” and was felt as far away as neighboring Nepal.
Now, the agency announces that the latest toll has risen to 95 dead and 130 people injured.
The 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck the sparsely populated Dingri township, located near the China-Nepal border, at 9:05 a.m. (1:05 GMT), 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.
“Multiple replicas”
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.
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“Fifty-three people died and 62 others were injured” during this 6.8 magnitude earthquake which shook the canton of Dingri at 9:05 a.m. (1:05 a.m. GMT), the Xinhua news agency said. A previous report reported 32 deaths.
“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
New China indicated that local authorities were going to the various communes of the canton “in order 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.
Precedents
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.
