Yushu Earthquake Kills Thousands In Qinghai
Posted on 26. Apr, 2010 by thanate in Earthquakes, News
Yushu earthquake struck on April 14, 2010. It originated in Yushu, Qinghai, China, at 7:49 am local time. According to the Xinhua News Agency, 2,220 people have been confirmed dead, 70 missing, and 12,135 injured of which 1,434 are severely injured. The epicenter was located in Rima village, Upper Laxiu township of Yushu County, in remote and rugged terrain, near the border of Tibet Autonomous Region. The epicenter is about 30 km from Gyêgu town, the seat of Yushu County, and about 240 km from Qamdo. The epicenter was in a sparsely populated area on the Tibetan plateau that is regularly hit by earthquakes.
The earthquake relief efforts in Yushu will shift from searching for possible survivors to reconstruction and the resettlement of those who lost their homes. Power and water have been cut off, and the road to the local airport is reported to have been blocked by landslides.
After the Sichuan quake, the disaster response was widely praised, the remoteness of Yushu means this rescue effort will pose very different challenges. Although the high-altitude region is prone to earthquakes, officials from the US Geological Survey said this was the strongest tremor within 100km of the area since 1976.
The Yushu region, home to 250,000 mostly ethnic Tibetans, is dotted with coal, tin, lead and copper mines. The region is roughly half-way between Xining and Lhasa, about 400km from the Qinghai-Tibet railway line.
Qinghai lies in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau, which formed due to the ongoing collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate. The main deformation in this area is crustal shortening, but there is also a component of left lateral strike-slip faulting on major west–east trending structures such as the Kunlun and Altyn Tagh fault systems that accommodate southeastward translation of the Tibetan area.
The earthquake occurred on the Yushu fault, about 300 kilometres south of the Kunlun fault. The Yushu fault forms part of the Yushu-Garzê-Xianshuihe fault zone, one of the most active fault zones in eastern Tibet. In history, many earthquakes greater than magnitude 7 have occurred in the Xianshuihe fault zone, Almost all sections of the Xianshuihe fault zone have produced strong earthquakes in records, except the sections of Yushu and Shimian. However, a trace of a strong earthquake occurred about 16,000 or 17,000 years ago has been found in Shimian. Hence, the Shimian section of the Xianshuihe fault zone is speculated to be currently locked and have the possibility of producing a strong earthquake in the future.
Sources: boston.com, wikipedia.org, news.bbc.co.uk, chinadaily.com.cn
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