A rock burst occurred in the Qianqiu Coal Mine in the city of Sanmenxia, Henan province, following a 2.9-magnitude earthquake on Thursday evening.

Of the 75 miners working in the shaft when the accident happened, 14 managed to escape and four were confirmed dead soon after accident. The remaining 57 workers were stranded in the mine.

Rescuers rescued eight workers as of Friday and found four bodies while searching for the trapped Saturday morning, bringing the total death toll to eight.

The incident in Henan comes less than a week after a gas explosion killed 29 workers in a coal mine in Hunan province, the worst accident in recent months, and also in the wake of fatal blasts at mining sites in Guizhou and Yunan. An AP report today in The Guardian notes that annual fatalities at China’s coal mines are now a third of the reported highs in 2002, though an AFP report cites campaigners who believe the true figures have been understated.

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Post tags: coal industry, coal mines, earthquake, Henan, mine safety, mining accidents
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The earthquake in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Thursday afternoon has injured 26 people, including three in a critical condition, a local spokesman said.

The quake has also toppled more than 30 units of housing, according to the spokesman with the Jiashi County Committee of the Communist Party of China.

No deaths have been reported, said the spokesman.

A 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region at 6:06 p.m. Thursday, said the China Earthquake Networks Center.

You can find more information on the Xinjiang earthquake from Earthquake Report.

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One opinion that’s been resurrected in the midst of the dam debate is its supposed me role in triggering 2008’s devastating Wenchuan earthquake – and that quake had some connection to a previous drought. Journalist Zhao Shilong, opining on the Sina microblog, joined other microbloggers in making this explicit connection: “There are certain connections between the drought and earthquakes. Three years after the southwest drought, the … Wenchuan Earthquake occurred. This year there is a drought in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River … It is very strange! We should beware of it.” […]

Meanwhile, in the absence of hard (public) evidence that the Dam caused the increasingly serious drought, the state media is on a bit of an offensive. On Wednesday, Xinhua, the state-owned news service, was peddling a story headlined (on its English site): “No evidence that dam causes drought: experts.” And on Thursday the campaign culminated with a new headline: “Three gorges help fight drought.”

In any case, early in the week, and in some quarters, the conversation had expanded into an ostensibly more answerable — and far more sensitive — question: how on earth did the Three Gorges Dam get approved in the first place? An unsigned editorial in the Western China City Daily, a large circulation paper based in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, far from Beijing, noted tartly: “Originally, the project was promoted by the government, investigated by a group of experts, and voted on by the National People’s Congress. Common people, even some experts, could hardly get the opportunity to participate in the process. But the construction of the project swallowed up both the inside and the outside of the reservoir and its adverse effects have also spread through different kinds of channels. Finally, we’re all involved.”

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Post tags: Beijing, Chengdu, earthquake, Sichuan, Three Gorges Dam, Wenchuan, Xinhua, Yangtze
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China’s government, often at odds with Tokyo, offered support to Japan after Friday’s powerful earthquake, with Premier Wen Jiabao expressing “deep sympathy and solicitude to the Japanese government and the people” and telling his counterpart, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, that China is willing to offer whatever aid is necessary.

Chen Jianmin, director of the China Earthquake Administration, said its International Rescue Team has put its members, equipment, materials and medicines in place and ready to depart for Japan, after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the Japanese coast, triggering a major tsunami and leaving dozens dead and displaced tens of thousands of people. “We are highly concerned about the earthquake in Japan and its consequences such as fires and building damages,” the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Mr. Chen as saying ….

An earthquake has been an occasion for China and Japan to set aside their differences before. After the 2008 earthquake that crippled China’s southwestern Sichuan Province and killed at least 68,000 people, Japan’s Self Defense Forces–as the country’s military is known–was the first foreign aid and rescue team allowed into China. Japanese corporations donated to aid efforts as well. Appliance-maker Panasonic, for example, contributed more than 10 million yuan to relief efforts in the aftermath of Sichuan quake, Xinhua reported at the time.

Among chinaSMACK’s collection of translated Weibo posts is a second-hand account of the Japanese response in 2008:

自然免疫:

@ PhoenixTV’s chief reporter Li Miao in Japan: During the Wenchuan Earthwuake [Sichuan Earthquake], many Japanese ordinary common people organized donations on the streets, while restaurants, 24-hour convenience stories, and many other places all had donation boxes. Japanese rescue teams deployed at the earliest time possible (waiting for the “yes” from the Chinese side), waiting an entire night for orders at Narita Airport; Apart from the government, various political parties also did what they could, the Liberal Democratic Party chartered planes to deliver supplies to Chengdu, and as the only Chinese journalist in the same industry, I can confirm this.

While some “netizen reactions”, inevitably, have been gleeful—there are examples on chinaSMACK for those with strong stomachs—celebration has been by no means the universal mood. At Foreign Policy, Adam Minter describes another current that he saw gradually emerging online:

In part, it’s a reaction against the nakedly inappropriate nationalism that marked some of the earliest reactions to the tragedy; but buried in that nationalist critique is an unflattering national critique as well. Take, for example, a message that was lifted to Weibo’s front page late in the day (similar to Twitter’s front page of popular tweets), that read, in part: “How many Japanese would write, ‘Congratulations on the Wenchuan earthquake?’” It’s an uncomfortable question that was, in a sense, revised and extended onto Twitter by a Chinese user who, tacitly invoking the crumbled buildings in the aftermath of the Wenchuan quake, pointed out, late in the day: “The casualties from an 8.9 event in China would be hundreds of times higher than in Japan.” That kind of comment, most likely, wouldn’t last long on China-based Sina Weibo, which is heavily “managed.” Indeed, as some began to point out on local and international microblogging platforms late in the day, natural disasters — whether in China or elsewhere — are politically sensitive events from the perspective of the leadership. This one, like Wenchuan, is increasingly becoming so.

Meanwhile, back at Starbucks, two young Chinese women in their twenties, one with iPhone, and the other gadget-less, overhearing my English-language conversation, brashly reached out to me. “We Chinese people feel very badly for Japan,” one said, while declining to give me her name. “We know that Japan cared very much for China after our earthquake. So we will want to help them.” When I asked if either one would consider donating to the Red Cross, just as Chinese had done in droves after the Wenchuan quake, they looked at each other, then back at me. “Why not?,” answered the one who already done all of the talking. “China is becoming a great nation these days. We should.”

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, earthquake, Japan, sinaweibo
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“During the Richter magnitude 8 Wenchuan earthquake of 12 May 2008, 1803 concrete and embankment dams and reservoirs and 403 hydropower plants were damaged. Likewise, during the 27 February 2010 Maule earthquake in Chile of Richter magnitude 8.8, several dams were damaged. However, no large dams failed due to either of these two very large earthquakes … It is very difficult to predict what can happen during such a rare event as very few earthquakes of this size have actually affected dams. Therefore it is important to refer to the few such observations that are available. The main lessons learnt from the large Wenchuan and Chile earthquakes will have an impact on the seismic safety assessment of existing dams and the design of new dams in the future …  At this time we are still in a learning phase as very few large modern dams have been exposed to strong earthquakes.”

The report highlights still greater uncertainty over the earthquake resistance of older dams. With the sophistication of dam design and construction advancing rapidly in recent decades, those built as recently as the late 1980s are now considered obsolete. This is particularly relevant to China, where over twenty thousand large dams (higher than 15 meters) were built in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The authors also examine the issue of “reservoir-triggered seismicity”, inconclusively implicated in the Wenchuan earthquake. Here, the focus is on the possible effects of RTS on dams themselves: modern dams should not self-destruct by triggering seismic activity severe enough to destroy them. However, other structures nearby may be more vulnerable, while landslides set off by RTS could significantly magnify the potential damage.

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Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, dams, earthquake, Wenchuan
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Post tags: disaster relief, earthquake, Yushu
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The U.S. Geological Survey reported on its Web site that a magnitude 6.9 temblor struck an area in southern Qinghai, near Tibet, on Wednesday morning and was followed by three quakes in the same area.

The main quake sent residents fleeing as it toppled houses made of mud and wood, said Karsum Nyima, the Yushu county television station’s deputy head of news, speaking by phone with broadcaster CCTV.

”In a flash, the houses went down. It was a terrible earthquake,” he said. ”In a small park, there is a Buddhist tower and the top of the tower fell off.

”Everybody is out on the streets, standing in front of their houses, trying to find their family members,” he said, adding that school buildings had not collapsed but students had been evacuated and were assembled in outdoor playgrounds.

Xinhua is reporting that the quake measured 7.1.

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More than 100 houses collapsed in the quake, which had an epicenter about midway between Chongqing and Chengdu.

The United States Geological Survey recorded the earthquake as having a magnitude of 5.2.

The casualties were reported in three villages of Moxi town, near Suining City in eastern Sichuan, according to the Sichuan Provincial Earthquake Administration.

Tongnan County, neighboring Suining, reported that 4,700 homes were damaged, with economic losses of at least 30 million yuan (about $4.5 million), Xinhua said.

According to a Xinhua report, this quake was not an aftershock of the massive temblor that struck Sichuan in May 2008:

Experts were still investigating the cause of the 5-magnitude quake, he said.

“We are sure this quake is not an aftershock because of change in geological structure and environment caused by the devastating quake in May 2008, which left about 87,000 people dead or missing,” Lu said.

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Landslides triggered by a small earthquake in southern China killed at least seven people and left one person missing over the weekend, local earthquake officials said Monday.

The 3.4-magnitude earthquake struck Sunday afternoon. It was centered in Guizhou province, 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of the capital Guiyang, according to a report from the Guizhou Earthquake Bureau.

The earthquake triggered two landslides in separate locations, burying and killing at least seven people instantly with large boulders that tumbled down the mountain, said Tian Xiang, a bureau spokesman.

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The earthquake, which measured 5.0 on the Richter scale, hit an area inhabited by the Xibe people, a community originally from Manchuria that established a frontier garrison in Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty.

It destroyed nearly 200 homes and damaged nearly 3,000 buildings on Sunday morning. No casualties have been reported so far.

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