HONG KONG - China said on Monday there had been no secondary geological disasters and no further casualties from a magnitude-7 earthquake that struck China's southwestern region of Tibet last week, killing 16 people and injuring 76, Reuters reported. The country's Ministry of Natural Resources said in a statement that the "impact of this earthquake on glacier lakes and glaciers within the affected area was generally minimal".
Source: Reuters, Oct 26, via WTBX
Authorities completed inspections of secondary geological disasters within a 50 km (31-mile) radius of the epicentre, the ministry said. Experts analysed 80 glacial lakes and 145 glaciers within the same radius. The quake struck Nagqu, a high-altitude city in northern Tibet, a sparsely populated region of China, and was the strongest to hit the country since January 2024, Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters, Oct 26
Rescue effort after the quake
Rescuers combed through the remote area after the earthquake killed at least 16 people, injured 76 and collapsed hundreds of homes, according to Chinese state media, the Associated Press reported on Friday. At least 339 homes collapsed, and China's national broadcaster CCTV aired footage showing collapsed houses and shattered stone walls in Nagqu. More than 12,000 residents were evacuated, with additional shelters under construction, China's official news agency Xinhua reported, and no one was reported missing in Baqen County in Nagqu, where the earthquake struck.
Source: Associated Press, Oct 23-24, via The Reflector
Search and rescue efforts were complicated by the geography and low temperatures, officials said. As of Friday afternoon, rescuers had done three rounds of searches, going through each household and each village, said Dunzhu, the acting mayor of Nagqu city, at a news conference, AP reported. More than 5,000 people from three local counties were deployed for rescue efforts, and supplies including 2,000 prefabricated housing units, around 3,400 tents and 2,000 folding beds arrived in the region. The US Geological Survey said the quake occurred at 10:33 pm local time on Thursday, with its epicentre 191 kilometres (119 miles) east-northeast of Nagqu, at a depth of 18 kilometres.