Team News Riveting
Beijing, January 7
Fifty-three people were killed and 61 others were injured after a devastating earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 on the Richter Scale hit rural areas of Tibet near Nepal border Tuesday morning.
The tremors were also felt in parts of Nepal, Bhutan and India’s Northeast, and Bihar. A magnitude 7.1 quake is considered strong and is capable of causing severe damage. The epicenter was monitored at 28.5 degrees north latitude and 87.45 degrees east longitude. The quake struck at a depth of 10 km, according to a report issued by the China Earthquake Networks Center.
Though Chinese authorities have confirmed 36 deaths, social media posts said 53 people had been killed. The toll is likely to increase once debris is removed. About 1,500 fire and rescue workers were deployed to search for people in the rubble, the Ministry of Emergency Management said.
According to the National Centre for Seismology (NCS), the earthquake was recorded at 6.35 am (IST) and occurred at a depth of 93 kilometers. A relatively weaker earthquake of magnitude 4.2 was recorded almost an hour before the massive quake hit the region. Over a period of three hours today morning, the region was hit by nine earthquakes, all over the magnitude of 4.2.
Southwestern parts of China, Nepal and Northern India are frequently hit by earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.
A huge quake in China’s Sichuan province in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people, while a magnitude 7.8 tremor struck near Kathmandu in 2015, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands in Nepal’s worst ever earthquake.
