BEIJING — A series of earthquakes shook two rural provinces in southwest China on Friday, killing at least 80 people and destroying more than 6,600 homes, provincial authorities said.
The temblors hit adjoining Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, both agricultural areas populated by some of China’s poorest people. The strongest earthquake had a magnitude of 5.7, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.
More than 200,000 people had been evacuated from their homes in Yunnan, a province known for its scenic beauty and ethnic diversity, according to the Yunnan Provincial Civil Affairs Bureau.
In the town of Luozehe, a rice- and tobacco-growing area in northeastern Yunnan, 46 people were killed, said Qiu Yu, an official with the civil bureau. He said Prime Minister Wen Jiabao would fly to the earthquake zone Friday. More than 700 people were injured and more than 120,000 homes are seriously damaged, Qiu said.
The earthquakes were so violent that rocks from landslides crushed cars in Luozehe, said a water-company worker, Tan Xuewen, in a telephone interview.
“Suddenly we felt the strong earthquake,” Tan said. “Huge rocks fell off the mountain. I immediately grabbed an old person and began to run.”
The local government authorities ordered people out of their homes, which are spread across the hills of a mountain valley, and told them to gather in the public square.
At a tiny primary school in Luozehe, teacher Ma Decai said his 11 students, ages 9 to 12, were eating lunch in the dining room when the earthquakes hit.
“Dirt dropped from the ceiling into our bowls and cooking pots,” Ma said. The students abandoned their meal and ran out of the room, he said. As he tried to prepare a new lunch for the students, aftershocks struck the building.
Large cracks appeared in the mud-and-stone schoolhouse, and the toilet had collapsed.
“Workers used steel in the construction, but they cut corners,” Ma said. “It’s not safe.”
In neighboring Guizhou province, the authorities said they knew of no casualties. But homes there, often built of wood and mud, are usually constructed on hillsides, and provincial authorities there said some homes had been damaged or destroyed.
Tents, blankets and coats were being dispatched to the region, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Guizhou, an area of rice farms and coal mines, had been undergoing major development, with hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into the province in the past year to build roads, bridges and industrial zones.
80
reported deaths, a number expected to rise
6,600
homes destroyed, with another 120,000 damaged
5.7
magnitude
