Earthquake hits China's Yushu again
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Xinhua, June 26, 2011
An earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale jolted a remote Tibetans-inhabited area in northwest China on Sunday, more than one year it was rocked by a more devastating quake, resulting in thousands of death.
No casualties, however, have been reported so far in Sunday's tremor.
The quake hit the county of Nangchen, in the Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Yushu in Qinghai Province at 3:48 p.m., said China Earthquake Networks Center. The epicenter was monitored at 32.4 degrees north latitude and 95.9 degrees east longitude with a depth of 10 km.
"We felt the quake strongly in Nangchen, but near our office we haven't found any collapsed buildings," said Drimi Lhundrup, deputy chief of the county government.
A 30-strong medical team has arrived at some of the hardest-hit villages by Sunday night. The team, which could only be reached by a satellite phone, said they found no casualties so far, Ren Baoyuan, another deputy head of the county government, told Xinhua Sunday night.
Ren said the six hardest-hit villages, resided by about 6,000 Tibetan herders, were about 70 to 110 kilometers away from the seat of the county government.
"We assume there would be no serious casualties as most herders there are out in the mountains to harvest caterpillar fungus, instead of staying at home at this time," he said.
Nangchen is about 185 kilometers south of Gyegu, the seat of the Yushu prefectural government and the epicenter of the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck in April 2010.
The quake last year killed nearly 2,700 people and flattened the entire town of Gyegu, leaving more than 100,000 residents homeless.
Post-quake rebuilding began in Yushu on June 20 last year and hundreds of new homes and public facilities have been built. The government's three-year rebuilding plan will cost an estimated 31.65 billion yuan (about 4.86 billion U.S. dollars).
