chengpi@ecf.toronto.edu (CHENG) (10/20/89)
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EARTHQUAKE STRUCK CHINA
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Subject: (AP) Earthquake hit rural area in Northern China
NEWS 10/19/89
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Series Of Quakes Kills 18 People, Destroys 8,000 Homes In China
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BEIJING - A series of major earthquakes shook a largely rural area
of northern China before dawn Thursday.
The temblors killed at least 18 people and flattened about 8,000 homes.
Officials of the State Seismological Bureau said the quakes injured
at least 28 people.
They struck less than 24 hours after the devastating quake in northern
California.
The temblors - registering between 5.0 and 6.0 on the Richter scale - hit
an area along the Shanxi-Hebei provincial border.
At least one was felt in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted
the bureau as saying.
The stricken area is a flat and dusty region about 135 miles west of
the capital where farmers grow wheat and other grains and many live in
one-story unfired clay-brick homes with dirt floors that easily collapse in
major quakes.
Shanxi is also China's major coal-producing province and the stark
brown land is pocked with coal mines.
The first quake, measuring 5.7, shook areas of Shanxi and Hebei
provinces late Wednesday. It was felt in the capital, but there were no
reports of damage and the bureau said there was no need to take safety
measures in the city.
There were at least four other quakes registering 5 or above in the
next six hours, including one of 6.0 magnitude.
Such tremors are capable of doing major damage in a populated area.
Bureau officials said at least 300 small quakes were recorded, but there
were no major aftershocks after dawn.
The officials said there was still relatively little information about the
extent of the damage. Xinhua said the casualty figures of 18 dead and 28
injured were ''preliminary.''
The stricken area is not open to foreign reporters and efforts to reach
it by telephone were not successful.