Damage
The high loss of life caused by the earthquake can be attributed to the time it struck and how suddenly it struck, as well as to the quality and nature of building construction in China. The earthquake lacked the foreshocks that sometimes come with earthquakes of this magnitude. It also struck at just before 4 AM, when most people were asleep and unprepared. Tangshan itself was thought to be in a region with a relatively low risk of earthquakes. Very few buildings had been built to withstand an earthquake, and the city lies on unstable alluvial soil. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed.
The earthquake devastated the city over an area of roughly 6.5 kilometres (4.0 mi) by 8 kilometres (5.0 mi). Many of the people who survived the initial earthquake were trapped under collapsed buildings. Tremors were felt as far away as Xi'an approximately 760 km(470 mi) away. Eighty-five percent of the buildings in the city were collapsed into ruins or became uninhabitable. The seismic waves spread far, with damage in cities such as Qinhuangdao and Tianjin, and a few buildings as far away as Beijing, 140 km from the epicenter, were damaged. The economic loss totaled to 10 billion yuan.
Read more about this topic: 1976 Tangshan Earthquake
Famous quotes containing the word damage:
“For most Northerners, Texas is the home of real men. The cowboys, the rednecks, the outspoken self-made right-wing millionaires strike us as either the best or worst examples of American manliness.... The ideal is not an illusion nor is it contemptible, no matter what damage it may have done. Many people who scorn it in conversation want to submit to it in bed. Those who believe machismo reeks of violence alone choose to forget it once stood for honor as well.”
—Edmund White (b. 1940)
“I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The damage such perception did to me I have felt ever since ... I could never belong entirely to one side of any question.”
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)
“Technological innovation has done great damage ... to eating habits. Food is now available in such unpleasant forms that one frequently finds smoking between courses to be an aid to digestion.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)