On the evening of October 22, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Baxoi County in Nagqu City, Tibet, causing at least 16 fatalities and 65 injuries. Local residents scrambled to evacuate as videos from the scene surfaced.
The earthquake hit at 10:33 p.m. on the 22nd, with a depth of 10 kilometers, and the epicenter located at 32.40 degrees north latitude and 93.79 degrees east longitude. As of 7 a.m. on the 23rd, 413 aftershocks were recorded, including 393 below magnitude 3.0, with the largest aftershock reaching 4.3.
According to a report by the Tibet Daily, a villager named Zunzhici Cheng from Ge Rutang Village in Zhashi Town, Baxoi County, described the intense shaking during the earthquake as feeling like hundreds of yaks were running simultaneously. When the earthquake struck, his family was already asleep. He woke up to the sound of furniture and wooden pillars creaking, realizing it was an earthquake, he immediately woke his 80-year-old sleeping father and helped him run outside. Other family members from different rooms also started to flee their homes.
Concerned about potential aftershocks, they arranged for the elderly father to sleep in the car while the rest of the family spent the night in the yard.
A report by the Xiaoxiang Morning Post quoted Ms. Wang, a front desk employee at the Huayi Business Hotel in Baxoi County, saying, “I was scared to death during the earthquake. Guests are now outside, some are in the lobby on the first floor, the atmosphere is very tense.”
Ms. Wang mentioned that she had never experienced an earthquake of this magnitude before, stating, “The shaking was extremely intense, I felt dizzy, my legs and hands were trembling, I almost fell when trying to run outside.”
She added, “In older hotels, tiles fell off, and in the convenience store next door, everything was shaken down, all the cups were shattered.”
Mr. Song from Xiangxi, Hunan, owns a Hunan cuisine restaurant in Baxoi County. During the earthquake, he and his family were sleeping in a room near the restaurant. He said, “We were awakened by the shaking, saw the dust falling from the walls, felt a bit dazed. Although I have never experienced an earthquake, I realized immediately that it was an earthquake and was getting ready to run when the shaking stopped.”
The earthquake also affected Mr. Wang, who works in Nagqu City but is originally from Zhejiang province. He was working overtime in his office when the earthquake struck. He described, “At first, the computer was shaking on its own, and before I could react, the whole building started swaying. In just four or five seconds, it shook three times in a row.”
Mr. Wang, who has been working and living in Tibet for over a decade, said this was the most noticeable earthquake he had experienced. He added, “One of my colleagues had cracks in their house.”
In the official report by the Chinese government, as of 10 a.m. on October 23, the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Baxoi County, Nagqu City has resulted in 16 fatalities and 65 injuries (including 11 severely injured and 54 mildly injured), with 339 households and 20 livestock enclosures damaged.
Due to the Chinese Communist Party’s tendency to conceal disaster information, the actual situation may be more severe than the officially released data.