For External Use
Reporting period
April 20-21-22-23, 2010
Situation Overview
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Yushu Tibetan Autonomous County in northwest China's Qinghai Province, at 07:49:37 AM on Wednesday 14 April with a depth of about 33 km. The epicentre is calculated to be 33.1 north and 96.7 east, 50 km west of Jiegu Township, the government seat of Yushu County, which is about 800 km southwest of Xining, the Qinghai provincial capital and 1,905 km southwest of Beijing.
Yushu Prefecture, located on the Tibet plateau with an average altitude of 4,000 meters above sea level, covers 267,000 square kilometres. It is a quake-prone area and has a population of more than 357,000 people including 174,900 females and 122,700 children aged 0-17 years, 97 percent of whom are Tibetans.
Jiegu Township is the seat of government for Yushu County, having a population of about 100,000, including permanent residents and migrants. Yushu borders Sichuan Province and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Yushu is designated a "national-level poverty county," with an average net annual income of around 2,300 yuan (about 338 USD) for farmers and herdsman.
Casualties, damages and losses are still under assessment. As of 23 April 2010, 2,187 people are reported dead, 80 missing and 12,135 injured (including 1,434 severely injured). While Yushu County was the epicentre of the earthquake, five other neighbouring counties (Chengduo, Zhiduo, Zaduo, Nangqian, Qumalai) were also affected by the earthquake.
Local houses are mostly made of wood and earthen walls. 15,000 buildings have collapsed. Over 85% of residential homes in Jiegu have collapsed. Settlement camps for the displaced have been set up, but many earthquake survivors continue to sleep in the open, even as nighttime temperatures fall below freezing.
Yushu has 50 primary schools and 3 teaching sites, 4 junior secondary and 3 senior secondary schools and 1 vocational high school, with a total of 22,719 students and 1,086 teachers. 90% of schoolchildren are of the Tibetan ethnic minority group. According to the Qinghai Province Department of Education, 207 schoolchildren were killed in the earthquake. Education authorities have also reported that out of a total of 139,175 sqm of school buildings, 36,572 sqm (26% of total) have collapsed and 61,574 sqm (44% of total) are unusable. Yushu Ethnic Vocational School and No.3 Complete Primary Schools are worst damaged.
Medical facilities were also affected by the earthquake. Yushu Prefecture MCH hospital and Yushu County MCH hospital both collapsed in the earthquake, while 8 other health facilities were damaged. MCH indicators in Yushu lag behind national averages, with low hospital delivery rate (62.7%, versus 94.5% nationally) and high infant mortality rate (22.7‰ vs 14.9‰ nationally).