600 Reported Dead in China’s 7.6 Quake

Two official radio stations reported Monday that 600 people had been killed by a powerful earthquake that struck just inside China’s mountainous southern border on Sunday, although other official estimates of the casualties were lower.

Radio Beijing and the Peoples’ Central Broadcasting Station quoted the same reporter, Hu Jiaqi, about the death toll, which could not be independently verified.

Radio Beijing also quoted Hu as saying that most of the dead were in Shanmato, a village in Yunnan province that was nearly wiped out by the earthquake, which registered 7.6 on the Richter scale. Communication with the region was extremely limited.

An earlier Radio Beijing report said total casualties from the temblor were 600, including dead and injured.

Figures Vary

The State Seismology Bureau in Beijing, which earlier had reported 18 killed and 54 injured, said it had no new figures late Monday. Dispatches from the official New China News Agency said at least 37 people were dead and more than 100 injured.

Dozens of aftershocks struck the Yunnan region through Monday night, the bureau said, with the strongest measuring 7.2 but most ranging from 4.0 to 6.0.

No telephone service was available to the affected part of Yunnan province near the Burmese border. It is sparsely inhabited by farmers, many from the Lahu and Va minorities. Most roads to the affected area were cut, and Yunnan authorities ordered an airlift of food, medicine and other relief supplies.

A Yunnan official reached by telephone said the provincial government had no idea how many people were killed. Asked whether 600 was a plausible figure, he said: “It might be. It might not be.”

If a death toll of 600 is accurate, it would be China’s worst earthquake since 1976, when 242,000 people were killed in the northeastern city of Tangshan. That quake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale.

Sunday’s quake was centered in Yunnan’s Lancang and Menglian counties, about 240 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Kunming. Seismologists in Kunming reported no damage in the city of 1.5 million.

China is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, and seismologists predicted in 1985 that activity would increase through the end of the century.