Follow-up: Rescue Shifts to Shelter and Treatment Phase After Baqen's 7.0 Quake: 18 Resettlement
Sites Built, Over 5,000 Rescuers Deployed
LHASA — Rescue work after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Baqen County, Nagqu, Tibet, has shifted to a phase in which resettlement and medical treatment advance together, Xinhua reported on October 24. So far, 18 resettlement sites, including those in Zharuogai Village in Maru Township, have all been set up, 12,489 affected residents have been safely relocated, and more than 5,000 rescuers from all levels have been deployed. As of 9 a.m. on October 23, 23 aftershocks of magnitude 3.0 or above had been recorded, the largest at magnitude 4.3. The quake has killed 16 people and injured 76, figures consistent with earlier official reports; this item does not update those totals but reports the latest progress of the rescue operation.
Baqen County sits at an average altitude of nearly 4,800 meters, and the hardest-hit areas are Maru and Gangqie townships, where nighttime temperatures can fall to minus 6 degrees Celsius. Rescue teams have focused on the two townships, working under the principle of "no household missed, no person left behind, no blind spot," combing house by house and site by site; where vehicles cannot reach herding sites, rescuers proceed on foot or by climbing, digging by hand with gloves where machinery cannot go. The first tents were erected in hard-hit Zharuogai Village at 3:30 a.m. on October 23, and relief supplies from central, regional, municipal and county levels are arriving in succession. Nagqu's emergency management bureau said it aims to ensure every affected resident has safe shelter, warm bedding, hot meals and clean drinking water.
Medical treatment is proceeding in parallel. Nagqu's health commission has dispatched 139 medical rescuers, 40 ambulances and one mobile CT vehicle, giving each injured person an individual treatment plan, alongside environmental disinfection and health monitoring to prevent post-disaster epidemics. Eight medical workers from Nyainrong County People's Hospital drove through the night to Gelonggai Village to check blood pressure and blood oxygen, administer glucose infusions and dress wounds. A 23-year-old woman 28 weeks pregnant in Zharuogai Village also received basic health checks. Experts convened by the China Earthquake Networks Center assessed the quake as an extensional rupture consistent with regional tectonic features, with the nearest fault the Baqen-Qamdo fault.
(GSM, from Xinhua, Lhasa, October 24, 2026)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：那曲风光，资料图。照片：Yaohua2000，CC BY-SA 3.0，经Wikimedia Commons。 / Scenery near Nagqu, Tibet (file photo). Photo: Yaohua2000, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
