Tremor leaves 14 dead in China
Bureau Report

BEIJING—A magnitude 5.7 earthquake shook part of central China on Saturday, killing at least 14 people and injuring nearly 400, the government said.
The official Xinhua News Agency said the quake happened around 9 a.m. local time, with the epicenter in Ruichang, a city of 420,000 in Jiangxi province.
Hundreds of homes collapsed and thousands were damaged, Xinhua said.
“The earthquake this morning was quite scary,” said a shopkeeper in Ruichang reached by telephone who would only give her surname Zhou.
Many people in Ruichang were staying outside for fear of aftershocks. She said she felt a milder trembling of the earth around 1:00 p.m.
Tents were set up outside a hospital treating some of the 377 injured.
The United States National Earthquake Information Center reported the quake was magnitude 5.5.
Thousands of buildings collapsed after a strong earthquake rattled east China’s Jiangxi province Saturday morning, a local official said.
A total of 8,072 rooms were destroyed in Jiujiang county as a result of the quake, measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale, said a county official by telephone.
In China, earthquake damage is measured not in buildings, but in rooms. A rural dwelling typically has two or three rooms.
Shockwaves could be felt as far away as Wuhan, a large industrial city on the Yangtze river more than 100 kilometers (63 miles) away, the sina.com website reported.
The website carried photos reportedly taken in Wuhan early Saturday, showing cracked walls and toppled mannequins inside shops.