Urgency mounts in search for survivors of powerful Tibet earthquake

Over 400 people trapped by rubble in earthquake-stricken Tibet were rescued, Chinese officials said on Wednesday, with an unknown number still unaccounted for after a tremor rocked the Himalayan foothills and shifted the region’s landscape.

The epicentre of Tuesday’s magnitude 6.8 quake, one of the region’s most powerful tremors in recent years, was located in Tingri in China’s Tibet, about 80 kilometres north of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. It also shook buildings in neighbouring Nepal, Bhutan and India.

The quake was so strong that part of the terrain at and around the epicentre slipped as much as 1.6 metres over a distance of 80km, according to an analysis by the United States Geological Survey.

Twenty-four hours after the temblor struck, those trapped under rubble would have endured a night in sub-zero temperatures, adding to the pressure on rescuers looking for survivors in an area the size of Cambodia.

Temperatures in the high-altitude region dropped as low as minus 18 degrees Celsius overnight. People trapped or those without shelter are at risk of rapid hypothermia and may only be able to live for five to 10 hours even if uninjured, experts say.

At least 126 people were known to have been killed and 188 injured on the Tibetan side, state broadcaster CCTV reported. No deaths have been reported in Nepal or elsewhere.

Chinese authorities have yet to announce how many people are still missing. In Nepal, an official told Reuters the quake destroyed a school building in a village near Mount Everest, which straddles the Nepali-Tibetan border. No one was inside at the time.

German climber Jost Kobusch said he was just above the Everest base camp on the Nepali side when the quake struck. His tent shook violently and he saw several avalanches crash down. He was unscathed.

“I’m climbing Everest in the winter by myself and…looks like basically I’m the only mountaineer there, in the base camp there’s nobody,” Kobusch told Reuters in a video call.

His expedition organising company, Satori Adventure, said Kobusch had left the base camp and was descending to Namche Bazaar on Wednesday on the way to Kathmandu.

But in Tibet, the damage was extensive.

An initial survey showed 3,609 homes had been destroyed in the Shigatse region, home to 800,000 people, state media reported late on Tuesday. Over 1,800 emergency rescue personnel and 1,600 soldiers had been deployed.

Footage broadcast on CCTV showed families huddled in rows of blue and green tents quickly erected by soldiers and aid workers in settlements surrounding the epicentre, where hundreds of aftershocks have been recorded.

State media said over 30,000 people affected by the quake had been relocated.

Home to some 60,000 people, Tingri is Tibet’s most populous county on China’s border with Nepal and is administered from the city of Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism.

No damage has been reported to Shigatse’s Tashilhunpo monastery, state media reported, founded in 1447 by the first Dalai Lama.

The 14th and current Dalai Lama, along with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, have expressed condolences to the earthquake’s victims.

500 aftershocks

Southwestern parts of China, Nepal and northern India are often hit by earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which are pushing up an ancient sea that is now the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau.

More than 500 aftershocks with magnitudes of up to 4.4 had followed the quake as of 8am (5am PST) on Wednesday, the China Earthquake Networks Centre said.

Over the past five years, there have been 29 quakes with magnitudes of 3 or above within 200km of the epicentre of Tuesday’s temblor, according to local earthquake bureau data.

Tuesday’s quake was the worst in China since a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in 2023 that killed at least 149 people in a remote northwestern region.

In 2008, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan, claiming the lives of at least 70,000 people, the deadliest quake to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan quake that killed at least 242,000.