More than 400 people trapped in rubble in earthquake-hit Tibet have been rescued, Chinese officials said Wednesday, and an unknown number are still missing after a tremor shook the foothills of the Himalayas and changed the region’s landscape.
The epicenter of Tuesday’s 6.8 magnitude earthquake, one of the most powerful to hit the region in recent years, was located in Tingri, in China’s Tibet, about 80 kilometers north of Mount Everest, the mountain highest in the world. It also shook buildings in neighboring Nepal, Bhutan and India.
The earthquake was so strong that part of the ground in and around the epicenter slid up to 1.6 meters over a distance of 80 kilometers, according to an analysis by the United States Geological Survey.
Twenty-four hours after the earthquake, those trapped under the rubble reportedly endured a night of sub-zero temperatures, increasing pressure on rescuers searching for survivors in an area the size of Cambodia.
Temperatures in the high-altitude region dropped to -18 degrees Celsius overnight. People trapped or unsheltered are at risk of rapid hypothermia and may only be able to live five to 10 hours even if they are not injured, experts say.
At least 126 people were killed and 188 injured on the Tibetan side, according to the state broadcaster. closed circuit television reported. No deaths have been reported in Nepal or anywhere else.
Chinese authorities have not yet announced how many people are still missing. In Nepal, an official said Reuters The earthquake destroyed a school building in a village near Mount Everest, which straddles the border between Nepal and Tibet. At that time there was no one inside.
German climber Jost Kobusch said he was just above Everest Base Camp on the Nepalese side when the earthquake hit. His tent shook violently and he saw several avalanches fall. He came out unharmed.
“I’m climbing Everest alone in the winter and… it seems like I’m basically the only climber there, there’s no one at base camp,” Kobusch said. Reuters on a video call.
His expedition organizing company, Satori Adventure, said Kobusch had left base camp and was descending into Namche Bazaar on Wednesday en route to Kathmandu.
But in Tibet the damage was extensive.
An initial survey showed that 3,609 homes had been destroyed in the Shigatse region, home to 800,000 people, state media reported late Tuesday. More than 1,800 emergency rescue personnel and 1,600 soldiers were deployed.
Images transmitted in closed circuit television Images showed families crowded into rows of blue and green tents quickly pitched by soldiers and aid workers in settlements surrounding the epicenter, where hundreds of aftershocks have been recorded.
State media said more than 30,000 people affected by the earthquake had been relocated.
Tingri, home to about 60,000 people, is Tibet’s most populous county on China’s border with Nepal and is administered from the town of Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism.
No damage has been reported to Shigatse’s Tashilhunpo monastery, state media reported, founded in 1447 by the first Dalai Lama.
The 14th and current Dalai Lama, along with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, have expressed their condolences to the earthquake victims.
500 replicas
The southwestern areas of China, Nepal and northern India are often affected by earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which are pushing up an ancient sea that is now the Tibetan Plateau of Qinghai.
More than 500 aftershocks with magnitudes up to 4.4 followed the quake until 8 a.m. (5 a.m. PST) on Wednesday, the China Earthquake Network Center said.
In the past five years, there have been 29 earthquakes with magnitudes of 3 or higher within 200 kilometers of the epicenter of Tuesday’s tremor, according to data from the local earthquake office.
Tuesday’s quake was the worst in China since a magnitude 6.2 quake in 2023 that killed at least 149 people in a remote northwest region.
In 2008, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan and claimed the lives of at least 70,000 people, the deadliest earthquake to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed at least 242,000.
