Twittering Tibet

Earthquake in Tibet. An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale jolted ‘dam gzhung (Ch: Damxung), 82 km from Lhasa, Latitude: 30.274°, Longitude: 90.711°, at 4:30 pm on October 6th. ‘Dam gzhung is part of Lhasa Municipality. Read a report about the earthquake from Chinese state media in English here and in Tibetan here.



As misleading reports come through about houses being razed down to the ground in Lhasa, where else to hear the news but from the horse’s mouth? Someone in Lhasa has been twittering regularly about daily life in Lhasa and has the following to say about the events of that day:

An earthquake was felt in Lhasa just a minute ago, the quake lasted for only 3 seconds, people were running on the street, dogs barking.
04:33 PM October 06, 2008

And now people were laughing on the street, as if something “exciting” happening.
04:35 PM October 06, 2008

Historically Lhasa wasn’t an earthquake zone…”, said **** of **** Hotel. It seemed that most people weren’t feeling panic.
08:30 PM October 06, 2008

The epicenter of the recent quake was in Damxung County (82km away from Lhasa), the qake measuring 6.6 degress on Richter scale.
09:56 PM October 07, 2008

More than 100 bldgs were destructed in Damxung County, > 30 dead. Nothing much happened in Lhasa, students had a half-day leave.
09:57 PM October 06, 2008

Had hotpot again till 4am, met 2 primary school students on the way back home, they were scared of quake & decided to sleep at Jokhang Sq.
04:47 AM October 07, 2008

And I have to emphasize that the quake only had an extremely minor effect on Lhasa, **** & the buildings around were affected at all.
05:42 AM October 07, 2008

2 Comments

  1. It’s nice to have a map, but how did Namtso (Gnam-mtsho) become Mamtso? And are there really cave drawings in the middle of the lake? And if the reports all say the epicenter was due West of Lhasa, why is it this map shows it as due North?

    Sorry, so many questions. But I’m a little disoriented.

  2. High Peaks Pure Earth

    Hello Dan,

    The map is from the Bradshaw Foundation’s website. For cave paintings there is a short article and photographs in South Asian Studies, 6 Magazine, 1990, http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/tibet

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