5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 24 killed buildings toppled

[AlaskaDenise]

14 killed as China quake topples buildings
Hotel, supermarket partially collapse; dozens injured

BEIJING — An earthquake struck China's extreme southwest near the border with Myanmar Thursday, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 125.

Witnesses reported that a supermarket and a hotel had partially collapsed in the magnitude 5.8 earthquake, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Xinhua saidthere were reports that people had been buried under debris and that the tremor had caused a power outage across Yingjiang.

The agency said there had been three aftershocks, measuring up to 4.7 degrees on the Richter Scale, within 10 minutes.

NBC News reported that 14 people were killed.

An official with the Yunnan Disaster Relief Center who would only give his surname, Chen, put the death toll said that more than 120 people were hurt.

Another official on duty at the center, Gao Shaotang, said many houses had been toppled.The website of the government earthquake monitoring station said the quake struck in Yunnan just before 1 p.m. local time (12 a.m. ET) at a depth of 6 miles.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42002746/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

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[AlaskaDenise]

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 14 killed buildings toppled

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 14 killed buildings toppled

Note this was only 6 miles deep! Another shallow quake with more damage. (per article above)

hmmm - just looked at the SUGS site - they say the initial shock was 21.7 miles deep.

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[AlaskaDenise]

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 14 killed buildings toppled

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 14 killed buildings toppled

Magnitude 5.4

Date-Time Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 04:58:17 UTC
Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 11:28:17 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location 24.710?N, 97.994?E

Depth 34.9 km (21.7 miles)

Region
MYANMAR-CHINA BORDER REGION
Distances 95 km (59 miles) SE of Myitkyina, Myanmar
246 km (152 miles) WSW of Dali, Yunnan, China
357 km (221 miles) NNE of Mandalay, Myanmar
2409 km (1496 miles) SW of BEIJING, Beijing, China

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0001wnu.php

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 14 killed buildings toppled

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 14 killed buildings toppled

The nearby (4 to 5 miles) away town of Yingjiang is built on the silt (like a delta) of one river where it meets another meandering (but large) river. So the area may have had the same unstable water-saturated silt as did Christchurch.

Yingjiang county has about 250,000 people!

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[Shiloh]

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 14 killed buildings toppled

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 14 killed buildings toppled

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/China+earthquake+kills+injured/4415495/story.html

China earthquake kills 24; 207 injured
Agence France-Presse March 10, 2011 11:33 AM

BEIJING - At least 24 people were killed and 207 others injured in an earthquake that struck a remote area of southwest China near the border with Myanmar on Thursday, a local official said.

The tremor reduced hundreds of houses to rubble, left some desperate residents trapped under buildings and triggered power cuts in the surrounding area of China, though no casualties were reported in Myanmar.

The epicentre of the 5.4-magnitude quake, which struck at 12:58 p.m. local time, was located about 225 kilometres west-southwest of the ancient city of Dali in Yunnan province, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The quake hit at a depth of 34 kilometres, the USGS said, though Chinese seismologists put the depth at just 10 kilometres.

An official at the local earthquake relief headquarters in Yingjiang county told AFP by telephone that authorities had so far counted 24 dead and 207 injured.

Nearly 600 houses or apartments had collapsed in the quake, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing local authorities.

Witnesses told the news agency that parts of a supermarket and hotel had caved in, and that people were buried in the debris...

 

[Emily]

Re: 5.4 Earthquake on China/Myanmar border - 24 killed buildings toppled

It looks like USGS updated their depth estimate to match China's.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0001wnu/

Earthquake Details

* This is a computer-generated message -- this event has not yet been reviewed by a seismologist.

Magnitude 5.4
Date-Time

* Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 04:58:17 UTC
* Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 11:28:17 AM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location 24.710?N, 97.994?E
Depth 10 km (6.2 miles)
Region MYANMAR-CHINA BORDER REGION
Distances 95 km (59 miles) SE of Myitkyina, Myanmar
246 km (152 miles) WSW of Dali, Yunnan, China
357 km (221 miles) NNE of Mandalay, Myanmar
2409 km (1496 miles) SW of BEIJING, Beijing, China
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 16 km (9.9 miles); depth +/- 0.3 km (0.2 miles)
Parameters NST=122, Nph=122, Dmin=597.8 km, Rmss=1.06 sec, Gp= 43?,
M-type=body wave magnitude (Mb), Version=5
Source

* USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)

Event ID usc0001wnu