On April 13, 2010, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake rocked remote Yushu county located 500km south-west of provincial capital Xining, The quake has killed more than 300 people and buried numerous others under rubble and debris. Rescuers have been dispatched to attempt to aid those trapped in buildings. The epicenter was in a sparsely populated, mountainous region about 150 km from the town of Qamdo, Tibet. The quake was recorded at 7:49 a.m. local time, which is about 7 in the evening on the American East Coast. The region neighbors the Sichuan province where 87,000 people died in a 2008 earthquakehttp://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/04/13/china.quake/index.html?hpt=T1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8619046.stm

In the hours following the April 2010 6.9 magnitude earthquake, new information continued to come in each hour concerning the damage sustained in the region. As of April 14, 2010 at 2 AM PST, the Associated Press reports a death-toll of about 400 people.http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gdspdDB0WaMv_An4A-NvHB_DwmCwD9F2NQ5G0 Additionally, those injured as a result of the quake has been raised to over 10,000 individuals. Workers in the regions with damage are currently working around the clock in an effort to find citizens who are alive but remain trapped beneath the rubble. Due to reported telecommunications problems, the rescue efforts—although continuing—have been hindered.http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gdspdDB0WaMv_An4A-NvHB_DwmCwD9F2NQ5G0

A 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit 57 miles north-west of Chengdu, China on May 11, 2008. The quake was the biggest to hit China since an 8.6 quake struck Tibet in 1950. A total of 80,000 people were killed and another 5 million were made homeless by the devastating tremor. Tremors could be felt in Beijing, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei and Hanoi, Vietnam.

In February of 2009, scientists in China and the United States reported their belief that the tremor was a result of building Zipingpu Dam, located 3.4 miles from the epicenter, and the filling of a large reservoir. They reported that the construction of the dam on the Beichuan fault line, coupled with a steep rise in water in the reservoir in the six months before the quake, put a tremendous pressure on the fault line, causing it to weaken and fail.Scientific American: Great China earthquake may have been man-made (February 3, 2009)