Asia is a seismically dangerous territory. In particular, an earthquake in China of 7-8 points is not uncommon. The destructive element claims tens of thousands of lives in a matter of minutes. One of the worst is the 1976 China earthquake.

Country geography

China - the largest country in Asia, occupies the entire east of this part of the world. It is in 3rd place in the world in terms of occupied area, second only to Russia and Canada in size. In terms of population, China surpasses all other countries on Earth.

Po occupies the Eurasian tectonic plate, which collides with the Hindustan plate from the southwestern side. At the site of the collision, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau were formed, the modification of which under the influence of the geological activity of these regions continues to this day.

Collision 2 tectonic plates- the main reason for the seismic activity of China. Strong earthquakes of 7-8 points are not uncommon here. They claim the lives of tens of thousands of victims in a matter of minutes.

Devastating earthquakes in China

History testifies to the following tragedies in China:

• 1290 - shaking in Chaikhli with a force of 6.7 points. About 100 thousand people became victims.
• 1556 - strongest earthquake in China in Shensi with a magnitude of up to 8 points. At least 800 thousand people died. A huge number of people remained on the lists of missing people, which gives every reason to believe that about a million Chinese were victims.
• 1920 - in the territory of Gansu there were tremors with a force of 7.8 points. More than 240 thousand people died.
• 1927 - in the province of Nan Xiang was shaking with a force of 7.6 points. More than 40 thousand inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom became victims.
• 1932 - more than 70,000 people died from an earthquake of magnitude 7.6 in the city of Changma.

China, Tangshan, 1976

In the summer of 1976, there was a terrible earthquake in China, in the city of Tangshan, recognized as the most destructive in the 20th century. Its magnitude reached 8.2 points. It lasted only 15 seconds, but this one wiped the city from the face of the earth, destroying all the buildings almost to dust. On a summer night on July 28, 1976, about 250,000 people died in China. However, most world experts agree that official sources have greatly underestimated the number of victims. The real death toll is at least 650 thousand, it can reach 800 thousand people. In its own way geological nature the earthquake in China in 1976 is comparable to the terrible natural disaster of 1556.

A stele was erected in memory of the dead in the center of the rebuilt Tangshan. Real tragic events formed the basis of many television films. The most famous is the film directed by Feng Xiaogang "Earthquake", released on the screen in 2010. The film demonstrates the amazing and uncontrollable power of the natural elements, shows how a few tragic seconds can break the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

New story

Tremors continue to bring misfortune to the largest Asian country:

• 1999 - shaking in Taiwan with a force of 7.6 points. More than 10 thousand people suffered, about 2.3 thousand died.
• 2008 - another catastrophe in Eastern Sichuan with a force of 7.9 points. About 90 thousand people died, more than 350 thousand were injured.
• 2010 - Qinghai province was shaking with a magnitude of 7.1. Fortunately, this time the experts informed about the impending catastrophe in time - and the residents managed to evacuate, which helped to avoid a large number of victims.
• 2014 - 6.1 magnitude earthquake in Yunnan. More than 600 people died, with a total of up to 3,000 injured.

Given the high seismic activity of the region and the high population density, developments in the field of research and prediction of possible tremors in order to timely evacuate residents from dangerous areas are very relevant for China.

Of all the countries in the world, China is obviously the most at risk from earthquakes. The country's vulnerability to natural disasters is explained by the movement of two plates of tectonic origin, moving away from each other: the Indian plate, which is responsible for the formation of the Himalayas and moving in a northeasterly direction, as well as the Pacific plate, moving westward and gradually moving under the Eurasian plate.

Therefore, seismology in China has a long history. But, despite the existing in the 1970s modern system warning, the earthquake in Tanynan (industrial center), located 149 km southeast of Beijing (Beijing), came as a complete surprise to many. First, according to scientists, Tanshan was outside the zone high risk, and this conclusion at that time was given the status scientific knowledge. Secondly, the warning system did not work properly.
underground workings
An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale occurred on July 28, 1976 at 0340 hours. In the city of Tanshan, with a population of 1.6 million, almost everyone was sleeping at that time. Many died immediately, crushed by stone blocks of collapsed buildings. Tanshan was an important mining center. Underground mines both in the city and around it only provoked even greater destruction.

During the first few hours, there was no question of any attempts to provide effective assistance. This became possible only with the onset of dawn. Access to the city became a huge problem: all roads, with the exception of one, were blocked. Unfortunately, the misfortunes did not end there: 15 hours after the first shock, a second, incredibly powerful aftershock with a magnitude of 7.1 points followed, burying the debris clearing workers and those who were trapped under the rubble, surviving after the first shock.

piles of bodies
The bodies of the dead were stacked in piles, and then quickly buried. But due to the haste with which the burials were carried out, in subsequent years, a problem arose from time to time: during heavy rains, fragments of human bodies appeared from the ground, which needed to be quickly reburied. Later, the Chinese authorities officially announced 250,000 dead, although many are of the opinion that this figure is much higher - about 500,000. 100,000 people were recruited to conduct rescue work, including both the military and volunteers. Across the country there was a call for material assistance.

The wave of destruction swept not only through the territory of Tangshan. In Hebei province, several areas were affected, the port of Tianjin, located 100 km southwest of Tangshan, was also forced to count the losses. The shocks were also felt in the territory of Beijing (Beijing). Many people are still long time were forced to spend the night in tents because of the danger of collapse of buildings.

At that time, the warning system had four categories: from early warning to sudden threat. As a rule, the population was informed only in the latter case. In the summer of 1976, the results of seismological studies indicated the potential for an earthquake, but then no one had a sense of impending danger. Information was sent to regional and local authorities. Further research showed that half of the population of Tangshan did know about the warning, which was spread by word of mouth. However, people did not take it seriously for the sole reason that it did not come from the authorities.

power struggle
For a long time outside of China, no one knew about the earthquake itself or its consequences. Information about the terrible disaster was leaked through diplomats and correspondents in Beijing. But the authorities closed access to foreigners in the affected areas, and also refused all types of assistance offered to them. Moreover, the timing of the earthquake coincided with the beginning of a struggle for power in the top Chinese leadership. Chairman Mao Zedong was seriously ill, for this reason the real power was concentrated in the hands of four leaders of the Communist Party, including Mao Zedong's wife. However, among the members of the highest echelon of power, dissatisfaction with the policy of the Gang of Four, as they were later dubbed, matured. Mao died on September 9, 1976. His official successor was Hua Tofeng, who came to this post thanks to the imperious personality - Deng Xiaoping, who arrested the Gang of Four and sentenced them to death immediately after Mao's death. Hua Tofeng visited Tangshan on August 4 as part of a government visit.

The restoration of the city began immediately after the earthquake and was completed in short time. An example for comparison is the following: after the 1906 earthquake, it took 30 years to rebuild San Francisco. Tangshan was restored in 10 years. Today, the city of 7 million inhabitants is one of the most prosperous cities in China. In addition, it received the Courageous City of China award. A monument was erected in the center of the city to the victims of the earthquake.

July 28, 1976 - Earthquakes measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale turned the Chinese industrial city of Tangshan (Hebei Province) with a population of 1.5 million into a pile of ruins. The material damage at that time was huge - more than $ 2 billion. According to various sources, from 242 to 800 thousand people died and about a million were maimed and injured. Such a number of victims is comparable only to the earthquake on January 23, 1556 in Shaanxi province (center - Xi'an). Then about 830 thousand people died and approximately the same number were seriously injured.

At times, natural disasters are preceded by. For example, the earthquake in Turkey on August 17, 1999, according to witnesses, began with mysterious lights: “They were unusually clear, round or triangular in shape, white, yellow, red and blue, and remained in the sky from 5 to 20 minutes. Before the tremors themselves, the bottom of the sea in Izmit turned red, and the water temperature rose to 40–45 ° C.”

The 1976 Tangshan earthquake in northeast China also started with incredible lighting effects. According to eyewitnesses, on the eve of some islands in the Yellow Sea, a very bright luminous ribbon was observed on the surface of the water. On land, in the region of a future underground storm, about five and a half hours before it began, a white glow lit up the night sky, lasting 20 minutes. 30 minutes before the tragedy, a huge fireball flew across the sky, which later turned into a bright sparkling streak. About 10 minutes before the start of the tremors, a red arc appeared in the sky and the electricity supply was interrupted in almost the entire province.

Before the very first vibrations of the soil at 03:42 local time, the sky lit up for many kilometers, as if in daylight. Numerous lights, most of them white and red, were visible up to 200 miles away. Bushes and crops were burned, the leaves on the trees were charred.

A direct participant in the tragedy, the locomotive driver, later said that about a minute before the earthquake, his fast train was running near Tangshan, and in the darkness of the night he saw something that looked like flashing lightning. Then the traffic light suddenly switched from green to red and went out. The driver braked urgently and was able to stop the train before the rails began to bend under the influence of tremors. “The train began to sway strongly from side to side, half-dressed passengers jumped out of the cars in horror, cracks began to appear on the ground. In the distance, thunder rolled over the city, columns of dust, smoke and fire shot up into the sky.

At about 5 o'clock in the morning, repeated shocks followed, as a result of which the buildings that survived in some places in the province collapsed. The epicenter of the earthquake was in Tangshan, almost all of its inhabitants died under the rubble of buildings. Enterprises of the coal and chemical industries, heavy engineering and a large metallurgical plant built by Soviet specialists worked there.

All factories and factories, as well as residential buildings, instantly turned into ruins. Bridges, dams, power lines, railways, highways, pipelines were destroyed. Fires blazed with no one to put out. The entire city was almost level with the ground, covered with many huge cracks. The hospital building fell into one of them, and a train with passengers fell into the other.

The Tangshan earthquake was felt within a radius of hundreds of miles from the epicenter. The shock wave even reached Beijing, located 160 km to the west, and there were also destruction and casualties. Neighboring Tianjin was also badly damaged - after the disaster, the city was closed to the public for two years.

What is scary is that the communist Chinese government did everything to hide the scale of the tragedy. The affected areas of one of the most densely populated provinces - Hebei - were cordoned off by troops and strictly limited entry there, and foreign journalists, rescuers and doctors were not allowed at all. The "great helmsman" Mao Zedong refused to support the West, and representatives of the International Red Cross could not deliver the humanitarian aid needed by the population. As a result, many thousands of affected Chinese died of starvation, wounds and disease.

Chinese soldiers built temporary shelters for the wounded, but there were not enough of them. The water supply was a serious problem, as the water mains were broken. The surviving eyewitnesses of the tragedy later said that they were left without food and water for several days. There were few professional rescuers, and thousands of corpses remained under the rubble. In order to prevent epidemics, Tangshan was sprayed with disinfectants from aircraft.

During July 31 and August 1, 1976, seismologists registered more than 100 tremors, the strength of which reached 4-5 points on the Richter scale. But there was nothing to destroy - instead of a giant industrial center, there was a huge space consisting of nothing but ruins. In the pictures of Soviet and American space satellites, this picture looked like Hiroshima after a nuclear strike in 1945. Well, after the ruins of Tangshan, along with the bodies left under the ruins of buildings, they leveled it with bulldozers.

In connection with an unprecedented earthquake, and after the death of the "great helmsman", the command of the Soviet Army twice canceled the military exercises of the military districts located near the Chinese border. Relations Soviet Union and China remained far from friendly, and the leadership of the USSR decided that it was not worth saber-rattling in the immediate vicinity of the borders of a billion-strong neighbor in such tense periods of its history.

There were no official reports of the earthquake from Beijing, but a report flashed in a Hong Kong newspaper that 655,237 people had died. In the Chinese communist press over the years, the figure was 242 thousand victims. According to Western experts, the death toll in the entire province was from 800 thousand to one million people, plus as many, if not more, mutilated people.

The tragedy became an "unplanned" event during the reign of Mao Zedong, who assured that as long as he was in power, there would be no cataclysms in his state. According to ancient Chinese belief, an earthquake meant that Heaven was angry and grandiose changes were about to come. In fact, on September 9 of the same year, 1976, the elderly Communist Emperor Mao died, and his widow Jiang Qing was condemned as an "enemy of the people."

On the other hand, the Tangshan earthquake served as an impetus for a new stage of work on earthquake prediction in China and other countries. Since that time, scientists have predicted more than 20 dangerous series of aftershocks. On the eve of ten of them, the Chinese authorities managed to timely evacuate the population to safe places, for example, in July 1995, when an earthquake occurred on the border with Burma, and in 1997 in Janshi (Khindzhang).

Dozens of years after the disaster, a bird park was created in the newly built Tangshan. It was opened on October 1, 2000 on the day national holiday China. The green massif occupied an area of ​​15 thousand m 2 and numbered about 3,000 birds of 70 species. In the neighboring, 5-millionth city of Tian-jin, which also suffered from the elements on the fateful day of July 28, 1976, a Memorial was erected in front of the Druzhba Hotel in memory of the victims of the earthquake in Hebei Province.

If you make an excursion into history, it turns out that on September 2, 1679, a tragedy occurred in this area, which was accompanied by numerous destructions and claimed tens of thousands human lives. In the following centuries, the indomitable underground element continued to count its victims around the world. Let's take the 20th century as an example:

1906, April 18 - an earthquake in America, as a result of which the city of San Francisco was destroyed - about 8,000 people died;

1920 - China - 200,000;

1923 and 1939, China - 200,000 and 28,000 respectively;

And there were also earthquakes in Ashgabat (1948), Germany (1978), Armenia (1988) and others. Interestingly, most of them occurred on the days of the new moon or full moon. Accident? Or does the Moon exert its influence on the occurrence of such catastrophes?

According to statistics, seismic disasters occur on Earth more and more often. And there is no explanation for this yet. If in 1900-1930 "only" 2,000 underground storms were registered, then in the period 1940-1982 there were at least 1,000 of them every year. 1983 - 300,000 earthquakes were recorded by seismological instruments different strength. (A person feels the vibrations of the soil from three points and above.)

Since 1984, the number of recorded earthquakes has already been about 1,000 during each day. Of course, not all of them lead to human casualties and destruction, but the proportion of dangerous earthquakes is also growing. In the first half of the 20th century, there were 33 such people, and in the second half - already 95. In 1947-1970, more than 150,000 people died in the world as a result of earthquakes. Between 1962 and 1992, the number of victims was already 577,000.

“This scourge is spreading the widest of all. Unavoidable, greedy, it affects the whole people at once. For not only individual houses, families, cities are exterminated, it happens that entire tribes and countries go underground, hiding under ruins or falling into an open abyss, ”wrote the Roman philosopher Seneca.

From the latest reports, one can note an earthquake in the northern part of China (on the border with Kyrgyzstan) in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in February 2003. Then about 300 people died, more than 2,000 Chinese were crippled, more than 11,000 houses were destroyed. According to eyewitnesses, utter chaos reigned at the site of the tragedy, village hospitals were overcrowded, and ambulances constantly brought up new wounded. At the same time, so often that the doctors did not even have the opportunity to count them.

2004, August 9 - in the southwestern part of China in Yunnan province, the strength of the tremors reached 5.6 points. As a result, about 400,000 people were left without a roof over their heads, about 200 were injured and 4 died. The underground element continues to gather its deadly harvest.

May 12, 2008 in Sichuan Province strong earthquake. Its epicenter was located 90 kilometers from the administrative center of the province - the city of Chengdu. On May 13, the earthquake happened again. According to preliminary data, the number of earthquake victims reached almost 12 thousand people.

December 16, 1920 An earthquake measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale hit Haiyuan County, Ningxia Province. 240 thousand people died, another 20 thousand people died of cold, having lost their shelter. This earthquake was the largest in China in terms of the total area of ​​the affected territories.

May 23, 1927 An earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale hit Gulang City, Gansu Province. About 200 thousand people died.

December 26, 1932 An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale hit Changma, Gansu Province. More than 70 thousand inhabitants of the city died.

March 8 and 22, 1966 in the city of Xingtai, Hebei province, tremors with a force of 6.7 and 7.2, respectively, were recorded. As a result, 8064 people died, 38 thousand were injured.

January 5, 1970 An earthquake hit Yunnan with a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale. 15621 people died, 32431 were injured.

July 28, 1976 the most happened terrible earthquake century in China. Tremors reached a force of 7.9 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was in the city of Tangshan, Hebei Province, 150 kilometers east of Beijing. 90% of the buildings in Tangshan were destroyed instantly. After 15 hours, the tremors repeated. This time they reached a strength of 7.1 points on the Richter jackal. The scale of destruction and the number of victims were unprecedented: the city was almost destroyed. In 1979, 250,000 dead were officially announced (before that, data on victims had not been reported). A report in a Hong Kong newspaper stated that 655,237 people died. .

September 21, 1999 An earthquake hit Taiwan with a magnitude of 7.6 on the Richter scale. 2295 people died. Wounded 8729.

February 24, 2003 An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale hit the Xinjiang region. The epicenter of the earthquake was located in the Tsiashi district, not far from the mountainous border with Kyrgyzstan, at a depth of approximately 33 kilometers. The number of victims exceeded 280 people. More than 4 thousand people were injured, several thousand were declared missing.

November 26, 2005 earthquake hit the cities of Jiujiang and Ruichang in the central province of Jiangxi. An earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale killed 14 people and injured 377 others. More than 8 thousand buildings (mostly low residential buildings) were razed to the ground.

July 22, 2006 an earthquake occurred in Yunnan province, 90 kilometers from the city of Zhaotong. The strength of the tremors reached 5.1 on the Richter scale. At least 13 people were killed and 41 others were injured. 56 buildings destroyed.

TANGSHAN EARTHQUAKE

The largest natural disaster of the XX century. An earthquake measuring 8.2 magnitude shook the Chinese city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976. Previously, this area was not considered seismically dangerous. Partially destroyed was Beijing, located 140 km from the epicenter. In total, more than 5.2 million houses were damaged to such an extent that it was not possible to live in them.

The country's authorities declared about 243,000 dead, about 164,000 wounded, more than 7,000 families missing, and 4,200 children orphaned. However, there are other estimates associated with a figure reaching 800,000 (sometimes the figure is 1 million) people killed and about the same number wounded. Indirect evidence of the underestimation of the number of victims by the authorities is the fact that the Chinese underestimated the strength of the cataclysm (it was alleged that the magnitude was 7.8). Some experts drew attention to the fact that the Chinese government never reported the number of victims, they learned about this only in 1988 from the China Seismological Survey. This “crafty” behavior of official China may be due to the fact that it was not possible to notify residents of the impending disaster, although a year before it, Chinese scientists, using a new network of stations, managed to predict an earthquake in Haicheng in a timely manner and managed to evacuate the population from the dangerous area. In 1976 the system did not work.

According to the officially recognized number of victims, the disaster took 3rd place after the great Chinese earthquake of 1556 and the earthquake in Indian Ocean in 2004 (the main destructive force here was the tsunami).

Some time before the tragedy, villagers noticed the restless behavior of dogs that did not want to eat, but preferred to howl with their heads up to the sky. At first no one could figure out what was going on. At first they thought of some kind of disease that struck the animals. Clarity came only on July 28. In addition, at night before the cataclysm, a strange glow was observed in the sky (mysterious “earthquake lights”), fish jumped out of the aquariums, chickens rushed back and forth in a panic, mice ran in flocks in search of shelter. In addition, the water level in the wells of the villages adjacent to Tangshan rose and fell several times before the disaster.

Many of those who remained alive after the main shock were finished off by the 2nd powerful shock of magnitude 7.1, which occurred on July 29. During this time, the survivors who were able to stand were rummaging through the rubble, looking for the wounded or at least some of their property. The elements destroyed the local hydroelectric power station, collapsed bridges, damaged reservoirs.

For automobile and railways it was no longer possible to drive. This circumstance significantly hampered the activities of the rescue teams trying to get to the ruined city. There was no connection, and in the capital of the state they learned about the incident only a few hours later.

In the "northern capital of Chinese porcelain", Tangshan, only the pavilion on top of the mountain located in the center of the city remained intact. From here, from a bird's eye view, the endless ruins looked especially depressing. There were lone trees here and there. Western media, commenting on satellite images, sadly stated that the city had been wiped off the face of the Earth.

Before that, over 1.5 million people lived here. The city was a cluster of workers' settlements, which were overgrown with coal mines and enterprises. Probably, due to the peculiarities of the main profession of local residents (miners), they are used to confronting danger and difficulties, helping each other in a difficult situation. Most of those who got out from under the rubble were in a hurry to help those in need. Thus, about 500,000 citizens were saved. on your own and with the help of other victims.

Since the city was completely destroyed by the earthquake, it is almost certain that the number of victims is much higher than was officially announced. In general, extremely scarce information was received from the disaster zone. Someone spoke about the restoration work, someone - about the workers rescued at some mine. China "closed" and neglected any international assistance, considering it too humiliating. Therefore, a huge number of victims should not be surprising.

For some reason, the Chinese government, trying to do everything on its own, did not bother in advance to create sufficient reserves of food and materials. Central authorities shifted the burden of responsibility to local administrations in the hope that the better to know how to act. But locally, too, they were confused. The army remained the only organized force in an extreme situation.

Tangshan is called the Phoenix City not only because of the mythical bird that, according to legend, once stopped on top of the green mountain (Phoenix Mountain) in the center of the city, but also because it was reborn from the ruins like a phoenix from the ashes.

Eyewitnesses told how the restoration of Tangshan took place. First, the builders re-erected micro-districts in the suburbs, where people were resettled, and only then they began work in the city center. The maximum number of builders reached 110,000 people. Hundreds of tower cranes and thousands of trucks were involved.

By the mid 1980s. updated Tangshan is even better than before. Modern infrastructure appeared in new houses, no one used coal for heating anymore. In 2003, the city was awarded the title of "State Level Garden City" of China, in 2004, the UN awarded Tangshan with the " best example in improving living conditions.

The Chinese called the year of the earthquake "cursed", because, in addition to a natural disaster, the whole country was stirred up by serious political events that took place within the Communist Party. The tragedy aggravated the difficult economic situation of the state and served as one of the factors that convinced the people and the government of the need for change. Soon the Chinese perestroika broke out.

The earthquake had a strong impression on the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire. In the center of the revived Tangshan, a commemorative stele has been installed and an information center dedicated to the 40-year-old event is located - a one-of-a-kind museum. In addition, in 2010, Chinese director Feng Xiaogang filmed a Chinese blockbuster film-drama Survivors of Horror (Tangshan Earthquake).

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