DINGXI, China (AFP) ― Rescuers battled through dusty rubble Tuesday to try to reach victims of two shallow earthquakes in China that killed at least 92 people.
State broadcaster CCTV showed images of soldiers digging through earth and sand to reach simple houses buried under landslides in the northwestern province of Gansu.
Seriously injured patients wrapped in blankets were put into helicopters heading to the provincial capital Lanzhou, which has the nearest major hospital.
The twin earthquakes that struck on Monday morning had magnitudes of 5.9 and 5.6, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, but were only 10 kilometers deep, so that much of the energy released was transmitted to the surface, where it wreaked havoc.
The overnight toll stood at 89 dead, reports said, citing the city government of Dingxi, which includes the worst-affected counties, and other local authorities, with hundreds of people injured.
In Meichuan, 20-year-old villager Chu Xiaoyi told China’s official Xinhua news agency a landslide obliterated his house.
“We were sleeping when it happened, so we ran out almost naked,” it quoted him as saying.
Initial investigations showed at least 5,785 houses had collapsed and another 73,000 were severely damaged, Xinhua said.
Around 6,000 rescuers, among them armed police, firefighters, militiamen and local government staff, had been sent to the region, it added.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
