Hanoi high-rises sway as quake hits northern Laotian province on Christmas Eve
Saturday, December 25, 2021, 13:19 GMT+7
A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck Phongsaly Province in northern Laos on Friday evening, sending aftershocks to Vietnam’s capital Hanoi and its northwestern Dien Bien Province while everybody was welcoming Christmas Eve, Vietnam’s Institute of Geophysics reported.
The earthquake, which followed two earlier less powerful tremors, hit a depth of around ten kilometers in Phongsaly, some 50 kilometers from Dien Bien’s Muong Nhe District at 8:43 pm, Nguyen Xuan Anh, director of the Institute of Geophysics, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.
Many people living in high-rise buildings in many districts of Hanoi, as well as in Dien Bien, felt the shaking due to the impact of the earthquake.
“I felt the shaking for about 10 seconds. The ceiling lights swayed vigorously even though no one touched them,” Ta Thanh Dung, a resident in the Bac Linh Dam urban area in Hanoi’s Hoang Mai District, told Tuoi Tre.
An earthquake shakes a chandelier inside a unit of a high-rise condo building in Hanoi's Gia Lam District on December 24, 2021.
Another family on the 33rd floor of Times City urban area of the same district said they clearly felt the aftershocks, with the water in their fish tank in the living room making strong waves, Zing News reported.
Nguyen Thi Thuy, residing in Dien Bien’s Nam Po District, said that the corrugated iron roof of her house was shaking for about 10 seconds.
“I have never seen such strong tremor. I have yet to come to my senses now,” Thuy said.
The same situation was seen in Dien Bien’s Dien Bien Phu City as a local named Nga said the door on the second floor of her house vibrated for seconds.
The institute’s Earthquake Information and Tsunami Warning Center said it was continuing to monitor this earthquake.
Earlier at 6:24 pm and 7:37 pm on the same evening, two quakes of corresponding magnitude 3.6 and 3.9 also erupted in Phongsaly, about 40km from Muong Nhe, the institute reported.
More than two years ago, another earthquake, at magnitude 6.1, was pinpointed in Sayaboury Province in northwestern Laos, at around 6:50 am local time on November 21, 2019, according to the institute.
The quake, around 219 kilometers from the Laotian capital city of Vientiane, also sent shockwaves to as far as Hanoi and the north-central Vietnamese province of Nghe An.
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