A 5.4 magnitude earthquake hit eastern China on Sunday, the US Geological Institute (USGS) said, with authorities reporting at least 23 people injured and more than 100 buildings collapsed. The earthquake occurred at 2:33 a.m. local time (6:33 p.m. GMT Saturday), 26 kilometers south of the city of Dezhou in Shandong province, at a depth of 10 kilometers, the USGS said. It is the strongest to hit this province for more than a decade, according to the state-run newspaper Global Times. It was felt as far away as Beijing and Tianjin as well as Shanghai, about 800 kilometers from the epicentre.
156 “collapsed” houses or buildings
The Dezhou authorities announced that the quake had injured 23 people, “of whom 10 were hospitalized with minor injuries, and 13 were slightly affected”. Earlier, state broadcaster CCTV, citing provincial authorities, reported at least 156 houses or buildings that “collapsed” due to the quake, which was followed by 52 aftershocks. Residents of the area have posted videos on social media showing lamps swinging from the ceiling, the ground shaking and people evacuating their buildings, including one where people are seen walking among pile of bricks strewn on the ground.
“During the earthquake, my head was shaking on the pillow, I thought I was having a nightmare,” a user from neighboring Hebei province told the Weibo platform. An AFP team was able to see cracked walls and scattered bricks on the ground near the epicenter of the quake in the rural and sparsely populated Pingyuan district in Shandong province, with damage that appeared relatively minor.
pile of bricks
In one village, residents were helping clean up and a group of four older women were rebuilding a low brick wall near overgrown land. Deng Hongqiang, 55, who lives outside the village but came to repair this low wall on his uninhabited property, told AFP that he was suddenly awakened. “I didn’t know then what was happening, all I knew was that the ground was shaking…so I got out,” he said. There is “no way” to repair his old house in the village, he notes, “we will have to tear it down and rebuild it”.
The Ministry of Emergency Management initiated a level four response, the lowest level, after the quake, and dispatched a team to carry out relief operations in Shandong, according to the state-run news agency China News. In CCTV footage, rescuers in red uniforms walked past first-aid tents set up on a school athletic field and surrounded by seemingly intact buildings. “Only a few uninhabited brick buildings have collapsed,” according to CCTV, which showed piles of bricks between intact buildings and a partially collapsed house.
The water distribution network and communication infrastructure were operating normally in the region, but the circulation of hundreds of trains was suspended on Sunday morning, according to CCTV. “I can’t say anything except that it’s scary,” another Weibo user testified. Earthquakes are not unusual in China but rarely strike the east of the country, where most of the population and major cities are located. According to the words of a member of the Shandong Seismology Bureau reported by local media, the probability of a more violent earthquake is “very low”.