China quake

About 2 hours ago we had a sensible, but not damaging shake in Kunming for 10-15 seconds. Not long after it was up on the USGS web site. The center was up in the mountains west of Chengdu, one province to the north. Mag 6.9 or 7.0 depending on who's sayin'

Local news has not got damage/injury reports yet, because Ya'an is a bit remote and landslides cover the mountain roads regularly. But the PLAAF (y'know what that is right?) is big in Chengdu and they will have something from helicopters.

In fact the TV coverage is now centered on Boston.

USGS has a system called PAGER that estimates damage and fatalities, and for the later it predicts 10 to 100. It has been quite accurate in the past. Therefore it is minor compared to Wenchuan (nearby) in 2008.

OOps - make that fatality estimate 100 to 1000. nothing confirmed on the ground yet.

 

Not a super-hit but China has a lot of folks living in weak houses. The body count is now 78; similar to Iran last week. Same problem; weak houses.

Through the day, recovery has been all over this. It won't be a repeat of 2008 with 70-80 thousand squished. But it might serve as another gentle reminder to govt to not keep building collapsible schools and hospitals in quake risk regions. This is my biggest local complaint; I could give a flip about so called politics.