China's Deadliest Earthquake in Over a Decade Kills 126: Why the Country Sees Devastating Tremors?

A deadly earthquake in China has killed at least 126 people and injured hundreds more in the north-western part of the country.

Chinese authorities said the earthquake measured 6.2 on the Richter scale, while the US Geological Survey recorded a magnitude of 5.9 and depth of 10 km.

The earthquake, said to be the deadliest tremors in 13 years, has destroyed more than 5,000 buildings in the Gansu province. Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered thousands of rescue crew to the region, among the poorest and most diverse in China.

Footage from CCTV showed family possessions strewn among masonry from a house that caved in during the shaking. Videos shown on state TV and social media networks showed entire villages split by the earthquake, as well as collapsed buildings and houses.

Deadliest in years

China is not unknown to powerful earthquakes, especially in south-western parts of the country where the Eurasian tectonic plate meets the Indian plate.

In August, a shallow 5.4-magnitude earthquake struck the eastern part of the country, injuring 23 people and collapsing dozens of buildings.

In September 2022, a 6.6-magnitude quake hit Sichuan province leaving almost 100 dead.

The quake is the deadliest to have hit China in nearly a decade, when more than 600 people died in southwestern Yunnan province in 2014.

China’s western hinterland carries the scars of frequent seismic activity, and a huge quake in Sichuan province in 2008 left more than 87,000 people dead or missing, including 5,335 schoolchildren.

The Gansu earthquake is the deadliest China has seen since the devastating 2010 quake in Yushu, Qinghai province, which claimed almost 2,700 lives.

Yunnan’s neighbouring province, Sichuan, also witnessed a devastating magnitude 7.9 earthquake in 2008 that killed some 90,000 people.

Why China Sees Deadly Earthquakes?

Devastating earthquakes are common in many countries, including Indonesia, Haiti, Japan or even Turkey. But China has also experienced several earthquakes have caused huge devastations.

In 1920, around 2,30,000 people reportedly died after a 7.8-magnitude quake struck Gansu province. Later in 1927, over 41,000 people died in an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude.

China sits in a region where several tectonic plates – notably the Eurasian, Indian and Pacific plates – meet and is therefore prone to earthquakes.

One of the primary reasons behind the devastation is that China has a lot of people. China is extremely dense and around 90 percent of the country’s 1.41 billion people live in the eastern half of the country and the coastal provinces are especially crowded.

Therefore, while seismic activity overlaps occur in part of the country that are less densely populated. However, on the flip side, the areas of seismic activity overlap with remote, mountainous terrains, where transportation and rescue works become difficult.

The prevalence of low-quality buildings in China and many of those constructed in violation of building codes further exacerbates the problem. Many of ill-equipped structures, built prior to the onset of economic reforms, was poor in the rural and developing areas.