Natural Disaster

A moderate earthquake rocked southwest China on 10 july 2009, injuring at least 336 people and collapsing 10,000 homes, state media reported.

The magnitude-6.0 temblor, centered in Yunnan province's Yao'an county, damaged another 30,000 homes, the Xinhua News Agency said.

Thirty people suffered severe injuries, while the other 305 were slightly injured.

The quake was followed by eight aftershocks and the provincial civil affairs department was sending 4,500 tents, 3,000 quilts and other relief materials to Yao'an, while hundreds of police were dispatched to the disaster zone.

Yunnan is a quake-prone, mountainous region that lies on China's southern border with Thailand and Burma. It also borders Sichuan province, where a magnitude-7.9 quake last year left almost 90,000 people dead or missing.

In 1988, a 7.1-magnitude quake in Yunnan near Burma killed more than 930 people. More than 15,000 people died after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake in the province in 1970, though authorities at the time covered up information on casualties and damage amid the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.


Reported by Rhobin