In the aftermath of Oct. 7, the terrible prospect of an “ocean of red” opens up before us.
The great Xingtai earthquake, registering 6.0 on the moment magnitude scale, struck Hebei province at 5:29:14 on the morning of March 8, 1966. Seismic shockwaves tore through the foothills of the Taihang Mountains, opening up yawning fissures in the landscape, while landslides, sand eruptions, and torrents of floodwater erased entire villages in a matter of moments. Five further earthquakes would follow, the strongest taking place on March 22, and the last on March 29. Three weeks of unrelenting tremors and aftershocks left the region, which had no prior instrumentally located seismicity, in a state of total devastation. Some 5 million homes were destroyed or damaged, and an estimated 8,000 lives were lost, mostly in the rural communities outside the prefecture-level city of Xingtai. Another 38,000 men, women, and children lay grievously injured, and hundreds of thousands more were rendered homeless and destitute amid the wreckage of their annihilated farmhouses and villages.
