Home › Landforms › Great Earthquakes
The 1976 Tangshan Earthquake
The predawn earthquake that leveled an industrial city east of Beijing, with an official toll of 242,419 and far higher outside estimates
In the early hours of July 28, 1976, an earthquake struck directly beneath Tangshan, an industrial and coal-mining city of about one million people some 150 kilometers east of Beijing. Most residents were asleep in brick homes that were not built to resist shaking, and much of the city was flattened within seconds. The official Chinese count of 242,419 dead places it among the deadliest earthquakes of the twentieth century, and other estimates run far higher. It came in a turbulent year for China, months after the death of Premier Zhou Enlai and weeks before that of Mao Zedong, and the government declined offers of foreign aid. Tangshan was rebuilt as a new city on the same site.
The shock, measured at magnitude 7.8 on the Chinese surface-wave scale and about 7.5 in moment magnitude, ruptured a strike-slip fault running northeast through the city, far from any plate boundary. It was an intraplate earthquake, one of many in North China driven by the slow push of the Indian Plate into Asia and by forces at the Pacific margin far to the east. Shaking reached intensity XI on the Chinese scale in the city center, where the great majority of buildings collapsed. Roads, rail lines and bridges failed, factories were wrecked and mines flooded. About 15 hours later a magnitude 7.1 aftershock struck near Luanxian, bringing down many of the buildings still standing. Damage reached Tianjin and Beijing, where residents camped in the streets for weeks.
The official figure, released in 1979, was 242,419 dead and about 164,000 seriously injured. Initial unofficial estimates reported abroad in 1976 put the toll at about 655,000, and the true number has never been independently settled. Unlike the 1975 Haicheng earthquake, ahead of which Chinese officials had ordered an evacuation, Tangshan came with no recognized warning, a contrast that tempered hopes for reliable earthquake prediction. The disaster led China to strengthen seismic building standards and to expand its earthquake monitoring and relief agencies. Tangshan today is a major steel city in Hebei Province, and a memorial wall unveiled in 2008 bears the names of those who died. July 28 remains a day of remembrance for many families in the city.