More than 400,000 people were being evacuated yesterday after an earthquake hit southwest China, killing one person, injuring hundreds and flattening more than 18,000 homes, officials said.A government relief official in Yao'an county, a mountainous area of remote Yunnan province, told reporters one person had died and 328 had been injured.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the 5.7-magnitude quake struck at 7:19 p.m. Thursday at a shallow depth of 10 km in Yunnan province.
"I was harvesting tobacco leaves ... when the quake hit. I felt dizzy and saw villagers falling over. Many houses collapsed," Dong Zhaofu, a farmer in Yao'an county told the state-run Xinhua news agency.
A 50-year-old woman was buried in the debris of collapsed houses and died later in hospital from serious blood loss, Xinhua said, citing local officials.
The quake was centered on a relatively sparsely populated area 98 km east-northeast of the tourist city of Dali.
Several aftershocks followed, driving residents outdoors into the warm night for fear of greater damage, Xinhua said. The USGS reported a 5.0-magnitude aftershock just after 5:00 p.m. yesterday.
More than 18,000 houses collapsed and over 75,000 others were damaged in six counties of Yunnan, with 30 people suffering serious injuries, Xinhua reported.
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