5.5 Earthquake rocks China

Saturday, November 26, 2005 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.