BEIJING: On Sunday, the bodies of the two individuals who remained missing following China’s worst earthquake in almost a decade were discovered. This tragedy has rekindled worries about vulnerable populations in areas prone to earthquakes.
That brings the total number of confirmed deaths from the 6.2 magnitude earthquake that hit the northwest regions of Gansu and Qinghai nearly two weeks ago to 151. At 1:16 a.m. (1716 GMT Saturday), the last bodies were discovered in Qinghai, according to official media.
The epicentre of the earthquake was in the border region between Gansu and Qinghai, making it the worst earthquake in China since a 6.5-magnitude quake in Yunnan province in the southwest in 2014, which killed 617 people.
Worries over substandard housing have been rekindled by the tragic events in the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu, which are home to a large Muslim minority group known as the Hui.
The homes that were destroyed were mostly constructed of earth-wood or brick-wood. According to the local authorities, their earthen load-bearing walls offer minimal protection during earthquakes.
The geologically complicated Qinghai-Tibet plateau borders the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the mountainous highlands of Sichuan and Yunnan. There are a lot of low-income rural farmers and herders who live close to the plateau’s edge, frequently on top of active fault lines.
Fearing that her partially damaged family house could collapse on her, 33-year-old Han Ting stayed put in an emergency tent set up by relief workers after the earthquake nearly destroyed her town in Gansu.
“The prefab house assigned to us is also a bit far, so we still choose to stay here in the tent,” Han, one of the thousands of Hui people who live in the region, said.
“It’s not too cold at the moment, and we aren’t lacking in daily necessities, and the children have also resumed school.”
As Han’s life began to get back to normal, thoughts of her grandfather lingered. He had survived the first shock of the earthquake but passed away a few days later.
According to her account told to Reuters, “On the night of the quake, he ran out of the house wrapped in just blankets and hid in a small car.”
To assist impacted people in moving out of tents as the winter wore on, local officials constructed thousands of single-story prefab houses in less than two weeks. The earthquake ruined more than 200,000 houses and forced 145,000 people to flee their homes.
“Our village was one of the more severely hit,” Han commented.
The government has promised to rebuild homes that have fallen and fix homes that have been harmed. However, the specific date is unknown to us.
