’Quake In Mongolia

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31261, 6 January 1967, Page 9

’Quake In Mongolia

(N.Z.P. A.'Reuter—Copyright)

MOSCOW, January 5.

A severe earthquake struck a mountain region in Mongolia today. The Mongolian news agency, Montsame, said small cracks appeared in die area of the epicentre, but no human life was lost.

First reports from Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital, said the strength of the earthquake at the epicentre registered a force of 10 on a 12-point scale.

Soviet seismologists pinpointed the epicentre near the Hangai mountain range, in North-western Mongolia, about 248 miles south-west of the Soviet border.

The earthquake was registered by seismographs at the University of California, in Tokyo, Washington, and at the Soviet seismographic station at Irkutsk, Siberia.

The area struck is sparsely populated, and damage was expected to be light Mongolia, a wild mountain land of nomad shepherds, is sandwiched between Siberia and China.

The general region was shaken in 1957 by one of the most powerful earthquakes in modern history, in which the official death toll was 1200 persons.

A spokesman of the University of California seismographic station said the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.5 on the Richter scale. By comparison, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake had a reading of 8.25.

The tremor was recorded at 4.27 p.m. local time (12.27 p.m. in New Zealand.)