Strong Earthquake Strikes China’s Shandong Province, Injuring 24 and Damaging Hundreds of Buildings

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A 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck China’s Shandong Province in the early hours of Sunday morning. The magnitude of the earthquake was the strongest in the province in the past 10 years. At least 24 people were injured, all of which were minor injuries. More than 210 houses and walls were damaged, and at least 59 aftershocks occurred. The earthquake occurred at 2:33 in the morning. The epicenter was in Pingyuan County, Dezhou City. The depth of the epicenter was 10 kilometers. Beijing, which is more than 300 kilometers away from the epicentre, also felt the tremors, and some netizens said they felt the tremors clearly. People in Tianjin and as far away as Jiangsu, Anhui and Shanghai also said they were shaken.

Shandong Earthquake

According to the mainland media, in the past 10 years, there have been 44 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or above in Shandong, most of which are not higher than magnitude 4, and only one earthquake of magnitude 5 to 5.9, and no earthquake of magnitude 6 or above has occurred. It is the most serious one. The incident happened in the early hours of the morning, and many people were asleep. The footage on the Internet shows that a family took shelter in the street. Some people hugged their children. A man and a woman could not even get dressed in time, and wrapped their bodies with sheets. Putting on the mask, he said to the camera, “I put on the mask, and then suddenly there was an earthquake.” The strong feeling of the earthquake caused people to rush out of the house. Some old people’s homes moved their residents to take refuge outdoors, and most of them were handicapped. It is reported that most of the earthquake areas are brick bungalows. After the earthquake, bricks and tiles were scattered everywhere on the road. Cracks appeared on the walls of some residential buildings, and debris fell from the ceilings.

“Woke up, the whole family ran outside the house to take refuge”

A Shandong resident described the tremors as obvious, “The glass was broken and the lamps were broken.” They ran outside for half an hour to take shelter. The closed-circuit television footage of the store showed that items on the shelves fell from heights one after another, and some convenience store employees ran out of the store in fright. Residents from all over Weibo reported that they felt the earthquake. Dezhou City, located in the epicentre, said that they were “woke up, and the whole family ran outside to seek refuge.” Netizens in Beijing, Jinan, Henan and other places also said that they felt the earthquake strongly and woke up after being shaken by the earthquake. One netizen said, “I can’t say anything except I’m afraid.” Another resident in Shijiazhuang, Hebei said that he was sleeping and felt dizzy. .

The probability of a large earthquake is low

Xu Xiwei, founding president of the National Institute of Natural Disaster Prevention and professor at China University of Geosciences, told Chinanews.com that Dezhou is not a place where earthquakes occur frequently. As for the obvious tremors felt by people around or even a little distance away, he believes that this has something to do with the earthquake occurring in the early morning. “Most people are in a state of sleep. If they are not in a deep sleep, they will feel more obvious after being shaken awake. If it happens in the daytime , most people are working, and may not necessarily feel it.” According to the post-earthquake trend, the Shandong Seismological Bureau preliminarily believes that the possibility of a larger earthquake after the current earthquake is very small. The earthquake bureaus of Beijing, Hebei, and Henan pointed out that the impact of the Shandong earthquake on surrounding provinces was minor.

Originally published on AM730

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2023-08-06 20:30:59