Brief Introduction

　　On July 28, 1976, an earthquake of 7.8 magnitude occurred in Tangshan City. The epicenter was the City center itself. This was a rare city earthquake. Just in a second, a city with one million people was razed to the ground. The people and the city suffered much from the earthquake. Even Beijing and Tianjin were severely affected. The damage coverage was above 30,000 kilometers. The shock could be felt in 14 provinces, cities and municipalities, one-third of the country territory. The earthquake took place at mid-night. Most of people couldn't take any action and were buried in the ruins and relics. The mizoseismal regions covered an area of 47 square km at the two sides of Jing-Shan railway, in which all buildings were completely ruined. One 8-km-long and 30-meter-wide slip cut through courtyards, houses, roads and canals. In the earthquake area and nearby, there appeared many crack zones, watersprouts and sand boils, hole blow, gravity landfalls, rolling stones, side slope, foundation subsidence, Karst cave downdrop and collapses of the hollow areas etc., causing 242,000 people to die and 164,000 heavily injured. Just in Tangshan, 1700 people suffered the disability in his rest of life. The direct economic loss was 540 million yuan as well as the damages of 530 houses and 1479 square kilometers of public houses. Water, power, communication and traffic were completely destroyed. All the mines stopped, and the infrastructure including hospitals and pharmaceutical equipment were completely destroyed. 

　　During the earthquake, seven commodity and oil container trains were derailed. The highway bridge over the Jiyun River and Luan River collapsed and cut off the traffic from Tangshan to Tianjin and the Northeast. Water pipelines and water plants were severely damaged. Buildings and infrastructures in Kailuan Mines were damaged too. The underground work was stopped and nearly ten thousand workers were blocked there. Tangshan Iron and Steel Corporation were forced to stop. The melting iron and steel was solidified in the furnace. Three large-size reservoirs and two medium-size dams collapsed and were split. The wave-proof walls were crashed down. 240 of the 410 small reservoirs were destroyed, 60,000 pumped wells were stuffed with sand. The sand-covered plowland was as much as 33,000 hectares, salt water-flooded soil was 47,000 hectares. Farm machines and instrument that were damaged were 55,000 pieces. 36,000 livestock and 442,000 pigs were killed. The living environment deteriorates quickly and intestine infectious diseases spread wide. After the earthquake, the central government organized and arranged emergent rescues. As a result, 300,000 out of 600,000 people escaped from danger. The PLA (Chinese People's Liberation Army) sent nearly 150,000 soldiers for the rescue work. The taking-off and landing of the aircrafts reached up to 390 planes each day. 159 special health care trains were sent into the place. The government in all level also settled problems such as drinking, eating and clothing of the mass in a timely manner. The preparatory work for the reconstruction started from the end of 1976. During the ten years after 1978, a new Tangshan had been rebuilt and well developed.