Rescuers rushed to find victims buried by twin shallow earthquakes in northwest China Monday after the double tremors killed 89 people and injured almost 600, officials said. The tremors in Gansu province — with magnitudes of 5.9 and 5.6 — set off landslides which buried often crudely constructed local houses, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Pictures from the scene showed simple buildings reduced to rubble, with pieces of corrugated metal used for roofing scattered over the wreckage. The government of Dingxi city in Gansu said on a verified social media account that 14 people were missing. Almost all the confirmed dead were in Min county, where a medicine factory employee told AFP he saw tower blocks shake “ferociously” when the quake struck. “I was in the workshop. I felt violent shaking and so I ran to the yard of the plant immediately,” said the man, surnamed Ma. “Our factory is only one floor. When I came to the yard, I saw an 18 storey building, the tallest in our county, shaking ferociously, especially the 18th floor.”An official at the provincial earthquake bureau told AFP that more than 1,200 buildings collapsed and 21,000 were severely damaged, adding that 371 aftershocks had been recorded. Nearly 3,000 firefighters, police, soldiers and local government workers had been sent to the area, Xinhua said, adding that rescue efforts were being hampered by landslides and roads had been blocked by heavy rain in previous days.
