Over 100 killed and 300 injured: Why earthquakes in China are so devastating

China has been shaken to its core. Over 100 people have died and over 300 people have been injured after an earthquake struck northwest China, just before midnight on Monday. First, a 6.2-strong quake struck Gansu province, which was followed by a second quake hitting the neighbouring Xinjiang hours later. Chinese president Xi Jinping reacting to the quake , has urged ‘all-out’ search and rescue efforts and proper arrangements for affected people to ensure the safety of people’s lives and property. According to the Global Times, Xi issued important instructions, demanding full-scale search and rescue efforts, proper resettlement of affected people, and maximum efforts to ensure the safety of people’s lives and property. As people reel from the horror of the quake, we take a closer look at how deadly has this quake been and why China is prone to such seismic activity. China’s devastating quake Just before Monday midnight, a powerful 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck the northwestern province of Gansu bringing down buildings there and in Qinghai province to the south. Gansu lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus and borders Mongolia. The United States Geological Survey (USGS), initially, said that the quake struck at a depth of 10km at 11:59 pm local time on Monday, later revising it to 6.2. The USGS added that the initial quake was then followed by several smaller aftershocks. The quake has wreaked massive destruction in the area. Houses have crumbled and infrastructure related to water, electricity, and roads in and around the epicentre have been damaged to varying degrees.

CCTV footage captured the moment when a 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit Jishishan county, Linxia, Gansu Province, China on Monday midnight. According to Xinhua, more than 110 people have died in the quake. All-out rescue work is underway. pic.twitter.com/d0M2ETJQ7S

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) December 19, 2023

A resident living in the area was quoted as telling the Global Times, “I live on the 16th floor and felt the tremors so strongly. The moment of the earthquake was feeling like being tossed up after surging waves… I woke my family up and we rushed down all 16 floors in one breath.” Following the earthquake, the State Council’s Earthquake Relief Command and the Ministry of Emergency Management have raised the national earthquake emergency response to Level II. According to reports, total of 1,440 firefighters have been deployed to disaster area for rescue efforts and another 1,603 have been put on standby. [caption id=“attachment_13519522” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Rescuers search a collapsed building in Caotan village of Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County in Haidong City, northwestern China’s Qinghai Province. AP[/caption] Relief and rescue operations are slow in nature owing to the biting cold temperatures in the region. The mercury has plunged to well below freezing across northern China, and footage shows residents warming themselves by a fire while emergency services set up tents. China’s history of quakes Earthquakes have plagued China throughout its history with Monday’s being the latest. In fact, the world’s deadliest earthquake is thought to have been the huge 1556 disaster that struck northern Shaanxi province, with estimates of the death toll put at more than 8,30,000 people. The Gansu region, in particular, has been prone to quakes. In 1920, a whopping 2,30,000 people perished after a 7.8-magnitude quake struck the province. Later in 1927, over 41,000 people died in an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter Scale. As recently as last September, 60 people were killed when a 6.6-magnitude quake hit the southwestern Sichuan province. [caption id=“attachment_13519452” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Rescue workers conduct search and rescue operations at Kangdiao village following the earthquake in Jishishan county, Gansu province. Reuters[/caption] In April 2010, the largely ethnic Tibetan region of Qinghai was also struck by a 6.9-quake, killing nearly 2,700 people and leaving more than 12,000 injured. In modern times, the 8.0-magnitude quake striking Sichuan is considered as the deadliest. The seismic activity led to large-scale death and devastation. Many had then said that the quake could be felt as far as Beijing, over 1,800 km away. China’s ground-shaking reality But why is it that China keeps experiencing such deadly quakes and records such devastation? The answer to the first question is location. China sits in a region where a number of tectonic plates – notably the Eurasian, Indian and Pacific plates – meet, and is particularly prone to earthquakes. Also, experts note that China’s earthquakes are particularly devastating owing to a number of factors. One of the main factors for the devastation is the location of the quakes. The areas of heightened seismic activity overlap with remote, mountainous parts of China, where poor transportation infrastructure makes recovery efforts difficult. [caption id=“attachment_13519482” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A government worker looks at the debris of a house brought down in the earthquake in Jishishan county in northwest China’s Gansu province. At least 100 people have been killed in a magnitude 6.2 earthquake in a cold and mountainous region in northwestern China. AP[/caption] Another reason why China’s quakes lead to so much destruction is the prevalence of low-quality buildings – many constructed in violation of building codes –exacerbating the damage. The Atlantic reports that earlier the quality of Chinese construction was poor; in many rural areas, most structures were made from adobe or watered-down concrete and thus were ill-equipped to survive earthquakes. Moreover, enforcement of building codes is a problem in China. Despite China now having well-defined codes, implementation is a problem. As Kit Miyamoto, the president and CEO of the earthquake research firm Miyamoto International, told The Atlantic, “You need more than just good building codes. You also need good engineers to implement the code, and good contractors to implement the engineers’ vision.” In fact, in the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan, many seismologists noted that much of the devastation was owing to the lack of implementation of codes. Andrew Smeall, an associate with the Asia Society’s US-China Center in New York, was quoted as telling Christian Science Monitor, “China has fairly rigorous building codes that have been in place. The problem is implementation of the codes.” Roger Musson, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Scotland, also echoed similar views. He said that China has good earthquake engineers, but “you can never tell what’s going to happen on the spot”. He added, “You can buy the building inspector, but you can’t buy off the earthquake.” With inputs from agencies