By Vivian Wang and Joy Dong
Rescue workers strained to plow through eight-foot piles of frozen sludge, which blocked the entrances to destroyed villages. Emergency vehicles struggled to navigate icy, damaged mountain roads. Victims with serious injuries were rushed to hospitals in cities, as demand for medical care overwhelmed the villages’ limited capacities.
In the wake of China’s deadliest earthquake in nearly a decade, emergency workers raced to find survivors and distribute aid in Jishishan County in China’s northwest. They were running up against the challenges of rescue work in bitter cold in a remote part of Gansu, one of China’s poorest provinces.
The quake, which hit late Monday night, killed at least 135 people, most in Gansu but some in neighboring Qinghai province, according to the latest official tallies. The death toll had been climbing gradually since Tuesday, and the window for rescuing survivors — shorter than usual due to the freezing conditions, experts said — had narrowed.
More than 87,000 people had been temporarily resettled as of Wednesday morning, Gansu officials said at a news conference. Photos in state media showed rows of blue tents erected at three main resettlement sites across the county, where residents wrapped in thick coats huddled around vehicles equipped with power outlets to charge their phones, or lined up for bowls of hot food. Others lit bonfires in the street to keep warm.
When the quake struck, according to state media, temperatures in Jishishan, a rural and mountainous cluster of towns and villages home to about a quarter of a million people, were at nearly -20 degrees Celsius, or -4 degrees Fahrenheit, part of a cold spell that has gripped much of China. The quake had a magnitude of 5.9, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, though the China Earthquake Administration put it at 6.2.
“Gansu earthquake: The worst time, the most vulnerable place” was a trending phrase on Chinese social media on Wednesday. Temperatures remained cold on Wednesday, with lows of around -16 degrees Celsius, or 3 degrees Fahrenheit.
The quake injured at least 980 people and damaged more than 200,000 buildings, officials said. One of the worst-hit towns, called Dahejia, exemplified the challenges facing rescuers and survivors.
More than 80% of houses in the village were now uninhabitable, a local official told Xinhua, a state news agency. Many of the houses had been made of earth, and some were more than a century old, making them especially vulnerable, one rescue worker said. Jishishan County had been considered “poverty-stricken” until 2020, one of the last areas in China to be supposedly lifted out of poverty as part of a nationwide campaign. It is home to ethnic minorities including the Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar people, many of whom are Muslim.
The county did not have enough clothes, quilts or shoes to distribute to residents and would need to rely on outside aid, a local official said Tuesday.
Some residents who had rushed out into the midnight cold when the quake struck still had only the few layers they’d managed to grab in the dark.
Ye Jinmo, a restaurant owner in Dahejia who was sheltering with her husband and four teenage children in a government-supplied tent, said by telephone on Wednesday morning that the government had not yet begun handing out clothing, though she had seen many supplies arriving.
Many of the relief efforts were concentrated on Dahejia, and some people in other villages were still waiting for aid on Wednesday. Because of tent shortages, some villagers elsewhere in Jishishan spent the night in their cars, or in shacks they built themselves, according to Caixin, a Chinese news outlet.
In the town of Chuimatan, about 16 miles from Dahejia, some residents whose roofs were now gaping open could only stay with relatives whose homes were more intact, or shelter in restaurants or public buildings, said Ma Zhanguo, a resident there. No tents or other aid had been distributed there yet, said Ma, who said his own apartment building had sustained cracks but was still inhabitable.
In Qinghai province, where 18 of the deaths occurred, rescuers were grappling with landslides triggered by the earthquake. Some buildings were buried in soil that had been liquefied by the tremors, then froze again in the low temperatures, The Paper, a Communist Party-affiliated news site, reported. Workers had to use excavators to try and clear the mud, and to pave paths through the mud with stones and firewood.
Officials said Wednesday that rescue work had largely finished, and that their efforts would turn primarily to treatment of the injured and to resettlement. At the news conference on Wednesday, Gansu officials said that electricity and water had been restored to all of Jishishan.