Beijing: Three people were killed and dozens were injured when a shallow earthquake struck southwestern China on Thursday, triggered the second highest emergency response rate by savior in Sichuan Province.
The earthquake hit Luxian District before dawn on Thursday about 120 kilometers southwest of Chongqing Megacity, which along with the surrounding area is home to around 30 million people.
Rescue workers rushed to lift people from the bottom of the debris, moved them from damaged buildings on stretchers, recordings from the Sichuan fire brigade showed.
Dozens of houses in Luxian reduced to debris and many others were damaged.
Local media published a picture of a ceiling that collapsed in the hospital when the residents flushed on the streets after warning not to return indoors.
The US geological survey placed the magnitude of the earthquake at 5.4 but the Chinese earthquake network center measured it on magnitude 6.0.
Both of them put it in a shallow depth of 10 kilometers (six miles).
Luxian authorities said the seismic events left “three dead, three seriously injured and 57 was a little injured”.
At least 10,000 people have been transferred to an emergency shelter, the local government said.
Living recording from Luxian by State Broadcaster CCTV shows workers climbing stairs in pouring rain to remove dangerous debris hanging buildings, including half-broken glass panels.
Students have evacuated their dormitories in the dark on Thursday, holding an umbrella and wearing a backpack, in another video from Sichuan Daily.
The authorities shrink the threat directly from a larger aftershock.
“There will be no bigger earthquake in the area in the near future, but aftershocks will continue for some time,” Du Bin, deputy head of the Sichuan earthquake administration, told reporters.
CGTN Run CGTN shared security camera records featuring TV and fridge vibrating on the walls of the house when the earthquake struck, as the ornaments hit the floor and crack running through the building.
Bricks are scattered across the street and trees fall in several areas, pictures show.
USGS said that “significant damage to possibilities and potentially expanded”, in a preliminary assessment.
Various disturbed electric lines and 62,000 households were hit by a power outage after the earthquake, the local government in Sichuan said in the Weibo post.
Highway traffic that passes through the area has been transferred to make a way for emergency vehicles and to avoid damaged roads, the local government said.
China is regularly hit by an earthquake, especially in West and Southwest mountainous regions.
The 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan Province in 2008 made 87,000 people die or missing.
Among them were thousands of children, killed when a poor school building collapsed, but the government failed to release a number of certainly died because the problem took the political dimension.
The police detained activists who tried to count the number of dead children and marked buildings that collapsed amid bad development suspicions.
The earthquake on Thursday came a few months after a strong series of earthquakes rocked a rarely populated area in the northwest and Southwest China in May, killing at least two people and injuring dozens.