LOST HOME: A villager in Yingjiang County stands in front of her collapsed home on March 13 (CHEN HAINING)

Forty thousand primary and middle school students in Yingjiang County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, returned to class on March 14, four days after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck the area.

The remaining 10,000 plus students in the county would resume class on March 21, said Li Shaobo, head of the county's Education Bureau.

Classrooms in most of the schools in the county were assessed by construction experts as safe for students to return, except for the schools in the county seat, which is closer to the epicenter and hit harder.

"As their classrooms need repair or reconstruction, some students will take classes in temporary classrooms," Li said.

Wang Genshun, an education official in Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture that has jurisdiction over Yingjiang, said students in the county needed a total of 200 mobile prefabricated classrooms. As of March 13, 50 such classrooms had been put in place, Li said.

On March 13, the Ministry of Civil Affairs sent 500 tents for the students in Yingjiang to take classes in, reported the Beijing Times.

The quake hit at 12:58 p.m. on March 10 at a depth of 10 km. It left at least 25 people dead and more than 314 others injured. The government has relocated 127,100 residents to safer locations, according to official statistics.

Losses

Yingjiang, near the China-Myanmar border, has a population of 300,000 and a land area of 4,400 square km. The county is crisscrossed with high mountains and deep valleys.

As the county lies on the Himalayan Seismic Zone, tremors are frequent there, said Gu Yishan, an official with the Yunnan Provincial Earthquake Bureau.

During the past two months, more than 1,200 minor tremors were recorded in the region, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.

The 5.8-magnitude tremor struck on March 10 when Yang Jifeng, a worker with Yingjiang Cement Co., was taking a nap and his wife was having lunch with their 1-year-old son.

The bed suddenly shook, the ceiling moved, and then the lights went off, Yang told Yunnan Information News.

After Yang realized it was a tremor bigger than others they had experienced in recent months, he and his family ran out of the house.

A man surnamed Lin told Yunnan Information News he was in an office building when the jolt occurred. Lin and his colleagues fled to the street and they saw the power poles swaying.

"There have been many minor tremors in Yingjiang, so we did not take this earthquake very seriously in the beginning," Lin said. "Luckily we learned how to protect ourselves from earthquakes before, so we did not feel panic. Only a few coworkers were slightly injured."

The earthquake toppled 18,402 rooms of 3,613 households, seriously damaged 49,130 rooms of 9,855 households and lightly damaged 49,130 rooms of 13,891 households, said Yunnan Provincial Civil Affairs Department the day after the quake.

The quake also seriously damaged hydropower, electricity and communication infrastructure.

As of March 14, the earthquake incurred direct economic loss of 2.68 billion yuan ($406 million), reported The Beijing News.

Frequent tremors in the past months have already done damage to buildings in the county, which might have worsened the damage from the quake on March 10, said Gu.

In addition, this earthquake's epicenter was not deep and very close to the densely populated county seat, he said.

Experts also said so many buildings collapsed or cracked because many of them sat on foundations in landslide deposits or foundations vulnerable to sand liquefying. Moreover, the structure and materials of many buildings in the area were not earthquake resistant.

Numerous aftershocks below magnitude 5 followed the earthquake on March 10. The soil on the slopes might have been turned loose by the tremors, increasing the possibility of landslides in Yingjiang, said experts in the Ministry of Land and Resources.

The departments of land and resources at various levels of governments in Yunnan have been monitoring sequent geological hazards, local officials said.

Helping hands

After the earthquake struck, central and local governments immediately started rescue and relief efforts.