Quake in China Kills Thousands

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Audio Slideshow: Earthquake Hits China

A powerful earthquake hits Sichuan province in central China, killing and injuring thousands of people. Listen to Washington Post reporter Jill Drew discuss the earthquake from Beijing.

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The massive Three Gorges Dam, a few hundred miles away, was not affected by the quake, state media quoted an official as saying. Two chemical plants in Shifang city were reportedly flattened, burying hundreds of workers and spilling more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia.

A Chengdu resident said the ground shook for several minutes and tall buildings swayed in the city of 10.7 million people. He saw one building shift position and begin leaning after the quake ended, but he said it had not fallen.

Chen Liangcai, in Sichuan's Deyang city, said the quake felt like "sitting on a train going through a hard turn." State media reported that five schools collapsed in the city, trapping an unknown number of students. Chen said local officials advised residents not to go inside their homes to sleep, but to spend the night outside.

Experts said many of the buildings were not built to withstand the impact of such a severe earthquake. In the four hours after the main quake, many other, smaller quakes were recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey. Experts said aftershocks could be just as deadly as the main quake because they put new strains on already damaged structures.

One Deyang shopkeeper, who declined to give her name, said she was advised to stay in her shop and not return home for the night. Rattled after having watched dozens of ambulances race by all afternoon, she said she would do as she was told. But she devised her own early warning system by putting a piece of metal in a glass; if she noticed it trembling, she said, she would run from the shop.

A reporter for National Public Radio who was in Chengdu at the time of the quake reported that tens of thousands of people had rushed into the streets, fearing that buildings would collapse. Many people remained in the streets for several hours, she said; stores closed and did not reopen.

Tang Yi, an office clerk in Chengdu, said local government vehicles were patrolling the streets about midnight, broadcasting from loudspeakers that residents should not panic. Tang said most of the people in his neighborhood were spending the night camped out in a local square. He saw some buildings with large cracks and others whose ceramic tiles had fallen off.

In Beijing, Olympic organizers said none of the venues built for the Games, which open Aug. 8, were damaged. Li Jiulin, a top engineer on the 91,000-seat National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, was conducting an inspection at the venue when the quake occurred. He told reporters the building was designed to withstand an 8.0-magnitude quake, according to Reuters.

In Xian, panicked residents across the city filled the streets as buildings shook. Strong aftershocks continued for more than an hour as stores, shopping malls and restaurants across the city shuttered. Many of the city's 13 million residents fled for the countryside, according to residents.

Zhang Guomin, a researcher at China's Seismological Bureau, said the damage was so great because the quake was shallow, about six miles below the earth's surface. Earthquakes less than 19 miles below the ground release 85 percent of their energy to the surface, Zhang said in an interview with the New China News Agency.

Researchers Liu Liu and Liu Songjie contributed to this report.