After a tremor shook the Himalayan foothills and changed the region’s geography, Chinese officials reported Wednesday that more than 400 people trapped by rubble in earthquake-stricken Tibet had been rescued, while an undetermined number remained unaccounted for.
Tingri in China’s Tibet, roughly 50 miles north of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, was the epicenter of Tuesday’s magnitude 6.8 earthquake, one of the worst shocks to strike the area in recent memory. Buildings in Bhutan, India, and Nepal, which are nearby, were also shaken.
According to a United States Geological Survey estimate, the magnitude of the earthquake was so great that within a 50-mile radius, some of the ground near and surrounding the epicenter sank up to 5.2 feet.
Those buried beneath the debris would have had to spend a night in below-freezing conditions twenty-four hours after the earthquake occurred, which would have increased the strain on rescuers searching for survivors in an area the size of Cambodia.
Overnight, temperatures in the high-altitude area fell as low as minus zero degrees Fahrenheit. According to specialists, people who are stranded or without shelter run the risk of rapidly becoming hypothermic and may only survive for five to ten hours, even if they are unharmed.
According to state channel CCTV, there were at least 126 confirmed deaths and 188 injuries on the Tibetan side. There have been no confirmed fatalities in Nepal or anywhere else.
The number of persons still missing has not yet been disclosed by Chinese officials. A school building in a community close to Mount Everest, which is located on the Nepali-Tibetan border, was demolished by the earthquake, a Nepali official told Reuters. At the moment, nobody was inside.
According to German climber Jost Kobusch, the earthquake occurred right above the Everest base camp on the Nepali side. He witnessed multiple avalanches crashing down while his tent trembled violently. He was unharmed.
In a video call with Reuters, Kobusch said, “I’m climbing Everest in the winter by myself, and it looks like basically I’m the only mountaineer there, in the base camp there’s nobody.”
Kobusch departed the base camp on Wednesday and was heading down to Namche Bazaar on his route to Kathmandu, according to Satori Adventure, the company that organized his excursion.
However, the destruction was widespread throughout Tibet.
According to a preliminary survey, 3,609 residences in the 800,000-person Shigatse region had been damaged, official media said late Tuesday. There were 1,600 soldiers and more than 1,800 emergency rescuers on the ground.
Families were seen gathered in rows of blue and green tents that were hastily set up by military and relief workers in the communities surrounding the epicenter, where hundreds of aftershocks have been recorded, according to CCTV footage.
According to state media, more than 30,000 earthquake victims have been moved.
Tingri, the most populated county in Tibet on China’s border with Nepal, is home to about 60,000 people. It is run from Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most significant individuals in Tibetan Buddhism.
According to state media, Shigatse’s Tashilhunpo monastery, established in 1447 by the first Dalai Lama, has not been damaged.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, and the 14th and current Dalai Lama have all offered their sympathies to the victims of the earthquake.
500 aftershocks
Because of the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which is pushing up an ancient sea that is now the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, earthquakes frequently strike the southwestern regions of China, Nepal, and northern India.
As of 8 a.m. local time on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET Tuesday), the China Earthquake Networks Center reported that the earthquake had been followed by more than 500 aftershocks with magnitudes as high as 4.4.
According to data from the local earthquake bureau, 29 earthquakes with a magnitude of three or higher have occurred within 120 miles of Tuesday’s epicenter in the last five years.
Since a 6.2-magnitude earthquake in 2023 that claimed the lives of at least 149 people in a remote northwest area, Tuesday’s earthquake was the worst to strike China.
The deadliest earthquake to strike China since the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, which killed at least 242,000 people, struck Sichuan in 2008 with a magnitude of 8.0, killing at least 70,000 people.
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