21 injured in southwest China quake

At least 21 people were injured and 21,000 relocated when a 5.3-magnitude earthquake struck a town in southwest China early on Saturday, authorities said. Yongshan County, Yunnan Province felt the shock, with an epicenter 13 km deep in Xiluodu township, at 6:40 a.m. Saturday, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center. All the injured are being treated at hospital. Among the 2,731 damaged houses, 75 collapsed. A total of 48 schools were damaged across six towns, said the county government's information office at about 2 p.m. on Saturday. According to the information office, electricity, transportation and communications in the area are back to normal. "We felt the quake strongly, but it did not last long," said a local resident. Some were woken up by the tremor and ran out of their houses, but returned home a few minutes later. Authorities have sent 650 tents for displaced residents and several thousands more have been made ready. Yongshan is home to the Xiluodu hydropower project, China's second largest hydropower station, only 15 km from the epicenter. Rumors have spread that the quake was caused by the power station. Zhang Jianguo of Yunnan Disaster Prevention Research Institute denied there is any evidence linking the quake and the power plant. The area has a history of quakes, Zhang said, and quakes caused by reservoirs usually have quite shallow epicenters, at a depth of around 4 km, while the epicenter of Saturday's quake was 13 km deep. Study of the relationship between quakes and hydropower projects remains an important area of research. Yunnan and neighboring Sichuan Province are vulnerable to earthquakes. Multiple earthquakes struck Yiliang county and its neighboring areas in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces in September 2012, killing 81 people. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Lushan, Sichuan on April 20, 2013, killing at least 196 people. On May 12, 2008, a 8.0-magnitude quake hit Wenchuan, Sichuan, leaving more than 80,000 people dead or missing.