A strong aftershock in China has knocked out telecoms networks which had only just been repaired following the devastating earthquake earlier this week. The aftershock, measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale, shook Lixian County which is barely 50km from the epicentre of Monday's earthquake.
The aftershock "added significantly to the difficulties" of carrying out relief work in Lixian county, CCTV television said.
While the area has suffered numerous aftershocks, this was the strongest one yet felt.
Just before the aftershock, China's National Development and Reform Commission has said that some 2,440 mobile phone towers were still out of action. China Mobile has previously said that it has detected problems with some 2,607 base stations, compared to about 700 for China Unicom.
It is worth noting that the Richter scale is base-10 logarithmic scale, so the 7.9 scale earthquake is many orders of magnitude stronger than the 5.9 aftershock. In terms of explosive necessary to generate a Seismic Energy yield - a magnitude 6 earthquake requires 1 megaton of TNT - while a 7.9 scale earthquake would require 600 megatons of TNT.
As of midnight Thursday, 122 aftershocks measuring above 4 on the Richter scale had been monitored in Wenchuan County, the quake epicenter in southwestern Sichuan Province, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center on Friday.
Posted to the site on 16th May 2008
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