Four dead after earthquake in southwest China
20 May, 2020
Four persons were killed and another 23 injured when an earthquake shook southwestern China's Yunnan province, local authorities said on Tuesday (May 19).
The shallow quake in Qiaojia county struck late on Monday evening, the Yunnan government said in a statement on its social media account.
Videos on China's Twitter-like platform Weibo showed shoppers taking cover in a store as boxes flew off the shelves, while students in a classroom elsewhere scrambled to cover up under their desks before covering their heads with textbooks.
The quake hit near the city of Zhaotong, with a population of over six million, and registered 5.0-magnitude, according to China's government seismology authority.
Around 600 rescue personnel have been delivered to the disaster area, the Yunnan government said, including firefighters and soldiers from the neighborhood division of the People's Liberation Army.
Videos on social media showed rescue personnel combing through rubble and streets full of fallen tiles and concrete.
Residents could possibly be seen stepping over debris because they left buildings, and trying in order to avoid rocks that had fallen on a road while riding a motorbike.
China is regularly hit by earthquakes, especially in its mountainous western and southwestern regions.
A solid 6.0-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province this past year killed 13 and injured almost 200 people, damaging a sizable number of structures.
A robust 7.9-magnitude quake in Sichuan in 2008 left 87,000 people dead or missing.
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