Earth-Shattering Events by Andrew Robinson

Author:Andrew Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780500773697
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2017-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

8 BIRTH PANG OF A NEW CHINA: TANGSHAN, 1976

Improvised classroom in Tangshan in autumn 1976. The students learn: ‘Father is good, Mother is good, but Chairman Mao is best’.

By a cruel irony, not long before the People’s Republic of China suffered the world’s most lethal earthquake of the 20th century, the country also benefited from the world’s sole earthquake prediction that enjoys at least a modicum of credibility among seismologists: that of the Haicheng earthquake in 1975. No large earthquake (and relatively few moderate ones) had occurred for more than a century in the Liaoning province of Manchuria – where the town of Haicheng is located near the northern end of the Bohai Sea – when, during early 1974, minor tremors began to increase. In the first five months of 1974, Chinese seismologists measured five times the normal number. They discovered, too, that much of the region had been uplifted and tilted to the northwest, and that the strength of the earth’s magnetic field was increasing in the area. They also observed anomalous underground electrical current readings and well water levels. The State Bureau of Seismology in Beijing – founded just three years earlier out of an initiative by Premier Zhou Enlai, following a strong earthquake not very far from the capital city in 1966 – issued a forecast: Liaoning should expect a moderate to strong earthquake within two years. On 22 December 1974, there was another burst of tremors. The forecast became more focused: expect an earthquake of magnitude 5.5–6.0 somewhere in the region of Yingkou, a major industrial port, during the first six months of 1975.

All over the affected area, animals began to behave strangely. Snakes awoke from hibernation prematurely and lay frozen in the snow; rats appeared in groups so agitated that they did not fear human beings; small pigs chewed off their tails and ate them. In addition, wells began to bubble. A swarm of tremors – 500 were recorded in seventy-two hours – culminated in a magnitude-5.1 jolt at 7.51 a.m. on 4 February 1975. A number of moderate shocks then followed, but by the evening the seismic activity was dying down.

Nevertheless, local Communist Party officials – after being vigorously spurred on by the head of the local Earthquake Office in Yingkou County, a former army officer named Cao Xianqing – decided on an evacuation, during an emergency meeting convened at 8.15 a.m. on 4 February. At 2 p.m., 3 million people were ordered to leave their homes and spend the night outdoors in straw shelters and tents. Without any panic, the masses of southern Liaoning province obeyed. The outside temperature was already many degrees below freezing. In Haicheng County, there was less sense of urgency from local observers of the tremors, and the evacuation was not so extensive.

In the course of the day, Cao predicted that the main shock would occur before 8 p.m., and furthermore, that it would be of magnitude 7 at 7 p.m. and of magnitude 8 at 8 p.m. At 7.

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