Pingyuan: A magnitude 5.5 earthquake jolted Pingyuan county in East China’s Shandong province out of sleep early on Sunday. The tremor, which was the strongest to hit the region in the past decade, injured 21 people and resulted in the collapse of 126 houses.
An evolved warning mechanism, which is being implemented nationwide, limited the extent of damage in the county, located south of the city of Dezhou, and helped residents remain calm, local authorities said, adding that rescue work was underway.
The earthquake struck at 2:33 am at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers at the epicenter, the Shandong Provincial Department of Emergency Management reported. It was felt in many places in Shandong and Hebei provinces, as well as in Beijing, and quickly became a trending topic on Sina Weibo. The chances of a stronger earthquake in the epicenter area in the coming days are less, the Shandong government said on its official Weibo account.
Many people received a quake alert on their cellphones several seconds in advance. The Beijing Earthquake Agency said the warning mechanism aims to provide emergency response time for people and special industries.
Zhang Zhixing, 40, a company manager who lives in Beijing’s Tongzhou district, said his parents and elder sister, who live in Shandong, called him twice on Sunday morning. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
