A magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck northern Tibet late on Thursday, according to the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). The quake occurred at a depth of about 10 kilometres, with no immediate reports of casualties or significant damage. China’s earthquake monitoring network separately reported a magnitude 4.7 tremor in the Nagqu area. The epicentre of the magnitude 5.0 earthquake was hundreds of kilometres north of the Nepal-Tibet border areas devastated a day earlier by catastrophic floods and landslides.
The wider Himalayan region remains on high alert because of the threat of further flooding. Chinese authorities have activated a Level-IV flood emergency response and are closely monitoring a large barrier lake formed near Gyirong following the disaster. China’s Ministry of Water Resources says the lake already contains about two million cubic metres of water and could receive another three million cubic metres over the coming days, increasing the risk of a breach. A later USGS assessment concluded that the previous day’s catastrophic flooding was not triggered by an earthquake, as initially suspected, but by the collapse of glacier ice and rock that generated a massive debris flow. There is currently no evidence linking the new earthquake in northern Tibet to that disaster. Sources: Reuters, GFZ, Xinhua and USGS.
