On February 4, 1975, an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 struck the city of Haicheng in northeast China, killing more than 2,000 people, injuring almost 28,000 and damaging 90 percent of the buildings. In spite of this tragic outcome, the local authorities claimed victory. Six hours before the event, seismologists had warned about the disaster, and most inhabitants stayed outdoors. Had this prediction not been made, some 150,000 people may have died during the cataclysm.
The news pleased people in Chile, Japan, Tibet and other areas of the world recently touched by major earthquakes. But their hopes for a safer future were short-lived. On the night of July 28, 1976, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the city of Tangshan, east of Beijing, without warning. How many people perished is not known. Some sources put the number at 250,000; others indicate more than twice as many.
Florin Diacu is a professor of mathematics at the University of Victoria and author of The Lost Millennium: History’s Timetables under Siege, whose second edition was published in 2011 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Advertisement
Advertisement