12 16 Haiyuan earthquake survivors

Dong Shanzheng, a survivor of Xi 'an Township in Haiyuan County, said, "The mountains of Wanjiashui have merged, and the two mountains are connected together, with no sheep and no people." 95-year-old Ma lives on the edge of Haiyuan County in Ningxia. He has always lived here, but his house has changed from a cave to a bungalow. More than 0/00 meters away from/kloc-is the site of the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake mass grave. After 90 years of wind and rain erosion, continuous graves can still be seen everywhere. Ma seems to be the last grave keeper of the biggest earthquake in the world in the 20th century. He never moved to other places.

"Grandpa was killed and uncle was killed." In the face of an interview with a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily, Ma's memory of the catastrophe at the age of five stopped here. There are five people in his family, and two people died in the earthquake. The earthquake centered on Haiyuan claimed more than half of the population of Haiyuan County. The earthquake affected a wide range, with Haiyuan and Guyuan in southern Ningxia, Jingning, Huining, Jingyuan, Tongwei and Weiyuan in central and northern Gansu, and western Shaanxi being the most seriously affected.

"How big is this earthquake? Let me tell you a few phenomena. " Guo Zengjian, former director of the Lanzhou Institute of Seismology, China Earthquake Administration, told Southern Reporter that due to the Haiyuan earthquake, the waves on the Baltic Sea surface floated as high as several tens of centimeters, and the transverse and longitudinal waves of seismic waves passed through the center of the earth. Tokyo, Japan, which was not very sensitive at that time, also monitored the seismic surface wave turning back after circling the earth. "Some people say that more than 230,000 people have died, and some people say that more than 200,000 people have died, but now the latest research result is that more than 270,000 people have died.

Post-earthquake rescue also bears a distinct imprint of the times. "Because China was in a melee among warlords at that time, there was no effective disaster relief. Many people in Haiyuan are mass graves, and several people bury a grave. " Liu Gang, director of the Seismological Bureau of Haiyuan County, told Southern Reporter that the descendants of Haiyuan victims have also migrated to neighboring provinces. Thousands of worshippers come from Gansu, Qinghai, Shaanxi and other places in Ningxia every year from 65438+February 16.

But outside Haiyuan, the death toll exceeded the catastrophes of China 1923 Kanto Earthquake and 1976 Tangshan Earthquake, but it was not known by more people. With the successive occurrence of Wenchuan and Yushu earthquakes, the long-forgotten Haiyuan earthquake was excavated again and became a specimen for Chinese people to mourn and examine.

The Haiyuan Earthquake Museum under construction, led by the government of Ningxia Autonomous Region, will hold an opening ceremony tomorrow to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Haiyuan earthquake. Du Nan reporter saw at the scene that the interior decoration of the museum is still in full swing and has not yet been exhibited. Liu Gang said that a symposium on the Haiyuan earthquake will be held and the imam will be invited to hold a prayer ceremony on the mass grave.

"Two mountains together, sheep and people have nothing."

"1920 16 February 16 around 8 pm, some abnormal phenomena were observed in some cities in China and neighboring countries. It can't be said that Chengdu, Daming, Shanghai and Haiphong are all very close. You should know that the distance from Chengdu to Daming is about 1200 km, and the distance from Haiphong to Shanghai is about 1900 km. However, at the above moment, all the clocks and watches of the French Consulate in Chengdu, the famous Jesuit Mission, the British Consulate in Shanghai and the Observatory in Haiphong stopped immediately. In these cities and many other settlements, people sitting at the dining table suddenly saw the chandelier start swinging, and later they knew something else. Under Sakamoto, north of Daming, three tattletale missionaries suddenly felt sick and nauseous. They felt that the floor began to sway like the deck of a ship. At a distance of 0/250km from China Sea/Kloc-0, housewives who went to the fair suddenly got seasick, and residents in Beijing and Tianjin felt the same way ... "This was written by an anonymous writer in the Soviet Union after the Haiyuan earthquake.

As researcher Guo Zengjian said, almost the whole world felt the impact of the earthquake. What is more relevant to readers in Du Nan is that the earthquake along the Shantou coast is also very strong. There is a British P&O passenger ship named "D evanha" from Shanghai to Hong Kong, and it feels as strong as an earthquake to Shantou. "The captain thought the ship might have hit an underwater drift, but when the ship docked at the Hong Kong dock, he was surprised to find that the whole hull was intact, and then he thought it might be the vibration caused by the earthquake." (According to the earthquake record of Xujiahui Observatory,192065438+February 16 Earthquake Overview and Comment)

Unlike the episode of a false alarm thousands of miles away, people in the center of the earthquake are experiencing the cruel test of where you will go. Feng, a survivor of Gongbei, Jiucaiping, Haiyuan County, described to the documentary crew of Walking in the Mountains in Ningxia a few years ago, "The old people said that when the ground shook ... our place shook its mouth and jumped down, and the ravines were so wide. Where people sit, landslides. " Dong Shanzheng, another survivor in Xi 'an Township, Haiyuan County, also said, "The mountains of Wanjiashui have been merged, and the two mountains are connected, so there are no sheep and people."

In the 5th issue of National Geographic magazine 1922, there is a report on "Walking in the Mountains" written by Klaus and Mai Kammir, which describes several phenomena during the Haiyuan earthquake: mountains move at night, landslides fall like waterfalls, houses and camels are trapped in large cracks, and everything involved the village in the rising soft soil sea. ...

"The Haiyuan earthquake is now set at 8.5, and it was also set at 8.6 in the past." Guo Zengjian, former director of the Lanzhou Institute of Seismology, China Earthquake Administration, said that the earthquake has formed a fault zone of more than 200 kilometers in the local area, and one lake even moved several kilometers because of the ground tilt. The hillside of loess geology was shaken into powder, forming loess flow. As most local residents live in caves, the casualties are even more serious.

During the period of 1958, the Institute of Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences sent six comrades, including Guo Zengjian, to make a field trip to Haiyuan earthquake. Guo Zengjian recalled to the Southern Reporter that a story he still remembers is that when the earthquake came, it was dark. Because there were no electric lights and fewer oil lamps, many people stayed at home. Most of the holes in the earth caves were blocked by the earthquake. One of the caves was later dug out by fellow villagers, but it was not completely destroyed. A person lying on the table, suffocating because there is no air, seems to be drinking water before he dies. There is something like oil in the bowl on the table, which seems to be vomit in a person's stomach.

There were heavy casualties. On April 3rd, 192 1, the news reported that "half of the county collapsed, and Feng Junying, a student in Haiyuan County, Gansu Province (Haiyuan was under the jurisdiction of Gansu Province at that time), received a letter from home, saying that" the earthquake on the evening of the seventh day hit my hometown particularly hard, and all the houses in the city were razed to the ground, with nine casualties among ten people. My home is Huayawan Villa, and the whole journey is complete. The house was emptied, leaving nothing behind. There are more than 60 thousand casualties in the county ...''

"When the livestock dies and gets lost, the German shepherd will roll up and eat people."

According to the earthquake disaster investigation in China People's Daily1921March, the death toll in Haiyuan County was about 45,000, more than 70,000 livestock were crushed, and houses collapsed by 8/ 10. Half a year later, Weng and Xie confirmed that the death toll in Haiyuan County was 7 in the official document of "asking for instructions from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the State Council".

The second worst-hit area is Guyuan County. 192 1, the official death toll is more than 40,000. 1958, when Guo Zengjian and others went to Guyuan for earthquake investigation, they could still see many earthquake relics: the thick brick wall was still there, and the words "Qin Zhen Gate" were engraved on the south gate (now the wall has been demolished). The tombstone and pavilion in Dong Fuxiang, the county seat, were split in two, the upper and lower sections cracked but did not collapse, and the next section was in the opposite direction.

Except Haiyuan and Guyuan, the death toll in other five counties such as Huining, Longde, Tongwei, Jingyuan and Jingning is more than 10,000.

16 After the February earthquake, aftershocks continued and the weather suddenly turned cold. "17 (aftershock) stayed up all night, and there were more steep winds at 8 o'clock, which was unprecedented. Countless people's livestock froze to death. The ground roared like thunder, and the momentum was extremely dangerous. 18, the wind stopped, the sky was dark, the ground roared first, and then moved five times, all of which were light. On the 19th, during the Eighth National Movement, the earth shook day and night. On the 20th, there were 1 1 big moves and 12 small moves ... "On April 24th, 0922, Xinlong 1 period recorded the aftershock and post-earthquake weather in detail. Among them, a heavy snow in Haiyuan and Guyuan counties killed many homeless people.

Xie, who visited the disaster area in 192 1, also mentioned in his article that the earthquake in winter caused the victims to be "displaced and have no food and clothing, so they did not die from the earthquake, but mostly from the cold." Since then, although there are emergency rescues everywhere and the traffic is difficult, it often takes several days to arrive, which is really slow and urgent. "

At that time, the Journal of Geosciences said in a brief report on the Shaanxi-Gansu earthquake that after the disaster, people "had no clothes to wear, no food to eat, no place to live, and they were miserable. They couldn't bear to see or listen ... They lost their homes for a day, endured the cold, endured freezing hunger, slept in the cold, crawled to help the wounded, cried everywhere, and died if they were not particularly hungry. The livestock died and lost, and the German shepherd also ate people. "

In the shadow of death, there are new buds. Guo Zengjian said that when he went to investigate on 1958, he heard that his mother gave birth to him in the wheat straw pile.

Before the tentacles of public power reached the earthquake zone, the victims relied on private relief to tide over the difficulties. When Guo Zengjian went to Haiyuan and other counties on 1958, he also heard from fellow villagers that when the earthquake just happened, everyone, regardless of you and me, took out ready-made meals and shared them together. After a few days, my psychology changed, and I thought about my future, so I couldn't go to other people's houses to eat and drink. "In the face of disaster, there was public interest at first, and then selfishness floated up." Guo Zengjian said.

When the long-awaited government relief finally arrived, the victims who suffered from hunger and cold often asked for relief regardless of their lives. Shi Zeng, then director of the Public Security Bureau of Guyuan County, recalled that two carts of pot cakes shipped from Pingliang had just arrived in the countryside of Guyuan County, and they were swarmed by hungry people, demanding to stop begging, and the soldiers guarding the pot cakes refused to retreat. These hungry people "would rather get a knife in their neck than give up their car."

"At that time, newspapers in Beijing couldn't even figure out the address of the epicenter."

The Haiyuan earthquake came suddenly and the local government agencies were seriously damaged. Coupled with the inconvenient traffic and communication at that time, it was difficult to organize rescue at the moment. "Lanzhou to Haiyuan will take several days to ride, what's more, the roads have been destroyed. The county government probably only recorded the disaster relief situation in a few places such as Jingning. Other county governments can't say clearly. Later, the government also adopted the method of "work for relief" to clear roads and pay wages to the victims, but they were all small-scale. " Guo Zengjian said.

The order of Jingning county at that time was Zhou. After liberation, he served as the director of Gansu Provincial Museum of Literature and History. According to his own "A Brief Account of the Great Earthquake in Jingning County, Gansu Province", the next morning after the earthquake, he distributed food from the county warehouse to help the victims without food, bought clothes from the store to help the people without clothes keep out of the cold, and took out tents from the warehouse to build huts as shelters for the victims, and called Lanzhou Hebei Hospital to treat the injured people. ...

Zhou is not bragging about himself. At that time, Zilin West Newspaper, an English newspaper published in China, published a report entitled "A Gansu county magistrate in the earthquake, a very true story", which described the behavior after the earthquake in Zhou Dynasty in emotional language: "This county magistrate is an energetic and very capable person, a real blessing for the people ... People are full of praise for this official. When the earthquake came, he immediately ordered people to rush out. And tell people to leave their houses, then go back indoors, kneel down and pray to God. If God is willing, he will sacrifice in exchange for forgiveness for the public ... After the earthquake, he came out and told people to rescue the living buried in the ruins immediately ... He also ordered the burial of the dead and animals at his own expense to prevent diseases. "

However, in the face of disaster, the local government, which was also hit hard, seems powerless. "At that time, the disaster relief was very slow. In Beijing newspapers, even the address of the epicenter is not clear. Foreign countries only said that it was in that paragraph. The communication conditions were poor and the damage was serious. It took many days to know. " Guo Zengjian said that Gansu businessmen, students and members of Congress who were in Beijing at that time appealed to the government for disaster relief and published notices in newspapers. At that time, many people raised money, and Beijing also set up an emergency fund-raising meeting.

According to the documents of China's Second Historical Archives, Governor Zhang Guangjian of Gansu wrote to the President in "urgent need" to ask for support, but it was more than one month after the earthquake-1921year 65438+1October 20th. Prior to this, on February 29th, 1920, 1920, Zhang Guangjian and Chairman of Gansu Provincial Assembly Wang Shi called the Ministry of Internal Affairs for help.

"Beiyang government may also have corruption and interception. Before the earthquake, there was a severe drought in five provinces in North China, and 500,000 people died. At that time, there was a saying that the government gave relief money to international organizations in order to save the drought in five provinces in North China. 192 1 At the beginning, the people who stayed in Beijing in Gansu exposed the incident in China People's Daily, which was well written and denounced the Beiyang government. The general idea is that Gansu is a province that takes food for the country. Why not give relief money? It seems that there is no such place on the map. " Guo Zengjian said.

Until1March 923 19, Zhou Zhilun, a member of parliament from Gansu Province, and others still described the tragic situation more than two years after the earthquake in an official letter to the Central Disaster Relief Office: "Since the earthquake, people's livelihood in our province has become increasingly depressed, with frequent hail, drought and crop failure. At first, the counties outside the province have been affected and the displacement has been extended to the provincial wall. " These members also mentioned that they have received letters from fellow villagers many times and learned about the tragic situation of victims in Gansu. "Lanzhou actually sells human flesh buns." Prices in Lanzhou skyrocketed, and more than 10,000 people accepted porridge in winter. Although people from all walks of life have donated money and clothes, "the voices of hunger and cold are still heard from time to time."

In this letter, a member of parliament from Gansu emphasized that the disaster relief fund that the Disaster Relief Office should allocate to Gansu is "not over half", hoping to sympathize with the sufferings of the people in the disaster area and make up for it quickly, so that "those who have no regrets will lose their blood". It can be seen that it is quite serious for the central government to intercept the funds that should have been allocated for disaster relief.

In the more than two years after the Haiyuan earthquake, the governor of Gansu has also changed many people, from Zhang Guangjian and Pan Linghao to Lin Xiguang. "Gansu local government also has disaster relief, but it is said that Governor Zhang Guangjian has corruption." 1958 Guo Zengjian, who has been to Haiyuan and other places, has also heard that when the Red Army passed through this place, it also criticized people suspected of corruption and disaster relief.

1920 12 16 Mr. Lu Xun, who lived in Beijing at that time, wrote a passage in his diary: "The night earthquake stopped in about one minute."

In just eight words, I wrote down the earthquake that Beijing felt at that time-it was just a feeling, but it didn't cause any harm. And these eight words actually became the earliest written record of the Beijing earthquake.

Mr. Lu Xun would not have thought that what he wrote was the aftermath of the earthquake thousands of miles away reaching Beijing.

Almost at the same time, many cities in China also felt the shock.

In Shanghai, the chandeliers and ceiling fans on the ceiling shook for a long time, and the clock and signal clock of the British consulate stopped swinging.

In Hong Kong, a priest named Fauchet was lying in a hospital bed. He obviously felt the bed shaking and the bedspread moving.

Under Sakamoto, north of Daming, three tattletale missionaries suddenly felt sick and nauseous. They felt the floor begin to shake like the deck of a ship. ...

On the other side of the earth in the United States, seismographs also clearly depict abnormal seismic waves. At that time, there were 96 seismic stations in the world with similar records.

Guo Zengjian, former director of Lanzhou Institute of Seismology, China Earthquake Administration, is the first geologist in New China to study Haiyuan earthquake. He said that at that time, Japan was the most closely monitored and technologically advanced country with frequent earthquakes. The seismograph in Tokyo detected that the seismic surface wave circled the earth once, then turned back a few hours later and was recorded again.

The instruments at Tokyo Seismic Station can amplify seismic waves 12 times, which is the most sensitive at that time.

This proves the powerful energy of Haiyuan earthquake on the other hand.

When seismic waves are detected, all seismic stations in the world have the same question-where is the epicenter?

According to American media reports at that time, American seismic stations speculated that the epicenter of the earthquake was 3000 miles away from new york. But it turns out that such speculation really underestimates the energy of the earthquake-even if it is not calculated along the surface of the earth, but directly takes the diameter of the earth, the distant Haiyuan is far more than 3,000 miles away from new york.

It is the Tokyo Seismological Station in Japan and the Xujiahui Observatory in Shanghai that predict the epicenter more accurately.

Xujiahui Observatory was established by the French church and presided over by Father Gelki. The summary and explanation of the earthquake 1920 12 16 made by Xujiahui Observatory recorded the tense monitoring site in detail:

The clock suddenly stopped and the chandelier shook strangely. Compared with ordinary people, they (missionaries) immediately realized what this meant and rushed into the basement with seismographs.

The pen tip on the seismograph is drawing a wider and wider curve, and the first wave of strong fluctuation appears at 20: 9: 16 seconds. After a little tenderness, the north-south magnifying pen on the seismograph was thrown aside by the violent vibration, and Father Gelki issued a warning: "Attention! The main peak of fluctuation is coming soon. "

The arrival time of these waves is 20: 16. Surprisingly, the intensity of the vibration made the seismograph unbearable, and the pen tip fell by half.

Although not all seismic waves have been recorded, the magnitude and location of the earthquake can be predicted.

It takes time for shock waves to surge on the earth. Chai, deputy chief engineer of Ningxia Seismological Bureau, told the reporter that seismic waves can be divided into longitudinal waves, transverse waves and surface waves according to their propagation modes. Their propagation speed is different. The seismograph records these waves separately, and then roughly calculates the location and intensity of the earthquake according to their arrival time difference, amplitude and other data. The epicenter predicted by seismographs in different locations will not be completely consistent, and the overlapping place is probably the epicenter.

Shanghai Xujiahui Observatory speculated that the epicenter was in the northwest of Shanghai, about 1400 km away.

Tokyo Seismological Station in Japan and Xujiahui Observatory in Shanghai have the same speculation about the epicenter: Longdong (Haiyuan belonged to Gansu Province at that time, so it was also called Gansu earthquake).