A powerful magnitude 7 earthquake struck a remote, high-altitude corner of China’s Tibet region late Thursday night, killing at least 16 people, injuring dozens and flattening hundreds of homes. Rescue teams spent Friday working through cut roads, downed power lines and freezing temperatures to reach villages that sit nearly three miles above sea level.

Here is what we know so far, based on reporting from BBC News, the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.

Where and when the quake hit

The earthquake struck at 10:33 p.m. local time on Thursday, October 22, with its epicenter in Baqên County in the Nagqu region of northern Tibet, according to China’s state news agency Xinhua, citing local emergency officials. The county lies roughly 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) northeast of Lhasa, Tibet’s capital.

The United States Geological Survey placed the epicenter in a mountainous area about 190 kilometers east-northeast of Nagqu city. Monitoring agencies differed slightly on depth: the China Earthquake Networks Center measured it at 10 kilometers, while the USGS listed it at 18 kilometers. Either way, it was a shallow quake, and shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage at the surface than deeper ones.

The USGS estimated that about 111,000 people felt moderate to severe shaking. Al Jazeera reported that it was the strongest earthquake to hit China since January 2024.

The human toll

As of 7 a.m. Friday local time, Tibet’s regional emergency command reported 16 people dead and 54 injured, 11 of them seriously. Some earlier reports, including figures cited by Reuters, put the number of injured as high as 65, and officials warned the death toll could rise as rescuers reach more isolated communities.

Damage reports describe at least 339 collapsed homes and 20 collapsed livestock sheds, a reminder that many families in the region depend on herding. Power and communication lines were reported down across parts of the affected area.

Because Tibet is tightly controlled by Beijing, Chinese state media is often the only source of information from the region, and independent verification of the figures is limited.

A difficult place to mount a rescue

The geography makes this disaster especially challenging. The affected villages sit at an average altitude of around 4,800 meters, or roughly 15,750 feet, where thin air slows rescuers and nighttime temperatures plunge in late October.

According to BBC Chinese reporting, rockfalls triggered by the shaking temporarily blocked some roads. More than 400 aftershocks had been recorded by Friday morning, about 20 of them magnitude 3 or higher, with the largest measuring 4.3.

The AP reported that more than 1,600 people had been deployed for search and relief work, and authorities were rushing emergency shelters, tents and winter supplies to the area, with snowfall expected in the coming days. China’s national earthquake emergency response was also raised as the scale of the damage became clearer.

Why this region shakes

The Tibetan Plateau, often called the “roof of the world,” exists because the Indian tectonic plate has been pushing north into the Eurasian plate for tens of millions of years. That slow collision built the Himalayas and lifted the plateau, and it continues to load stress onto faults across the region.

Large earthquakes are a recurring feature of the area. The BBC noted that this is the deadliest quake in the broader region since 2023, when a magnitude 6.2 earthquake in neighboring Gansu province killed more than 100 people.

What happens next

The next few days will be focused on reaching cut-off villages, treating the injured and sheltering families who lost their homes before winter weather sets in. With aftershocks continuing and roads damaged, officials will also be assessing the risk of further rockfalls and landslides.

Casualty numbers in disasters like this often change as communication is restored and rescuers reach remote areas, so expect updated figures over the weekend. For people far from the region, the most reliable way to follow developments is through established international news outlets and official updates relayed by them.

The bottom line

A shallow magnitude 7 earthquake has hit one of the most remote and highest-altitude inhabited places on Earth, killing at least 16 people and leaving hundreds of families without homes as the cold season begins. The coming days will test how quickly aid can reach communities where the terrain itself is one of the biggest obstacles.

Image: Winter on the Tibetan Plateau (MODIS 2024-02-19) by MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Mark 1.0