Earthquakes always seem to play the role of uninvited guests who disturb people's normal lives. At this time, it was the late night of December 16, the first year of the empire, and a major earthquake with a magnitude of 8.5 occurred in Haiyuan, Gansu (Ningxia did not set up a provincial-level unit).∴

Almost at the same time, many cities in China were feeling the shock. In Shanghai, the chandeliers and ceiling fans on the ceiling shook for a long time, and the clock and signal clock of the British Consulate stopped swinging. In Hong Kong, a priest named Fauchette was lying on a hospital bed, and he could clearly feel the bed shaking and the veil moving. In Yucheng, Jinan Province, three chatting missionaries suddenly felt sick and nauseated, and they felt that the floor began to sway like the deck of a ship......

On the other side of the world, in the United States, abnormal seismic waves are also clearly depicted on seismographs. At that time, 96 seismic stations in the world had similar records.

The director of the Lanzhou Station of the Earthquake Disaster Research Center of the National Academy of Sciences was the first geologist in the empire to record the earthquake in Haiyuan. He said that at that time, the most rigorous and advanced technology for earthquake monitoring was not Japan, which was prone to earthquakes, but the fledgling China Earthquake Disaster Research Center, which set up earthquake monitoring stations in the core cities of the six regions, and was equipped with the most advanced transistor seismic monitoring recorder at that time, and the instruments of these six monitoring stations could amplify the seismic waves by 24 times, which was the most sensitive at that time. Seismographs in Lanzhou detected that the surface waves of the earthquake had circled the Earth, and then turned back a few hours later and were recorded again, which confirmed the strength of the Haiyuan earthquake. When seismic waves are detected, all seismic stations in the world have the same question - where is the epicenter?

According to U.S. media reports at the time, the U.S. Seismological Observatory speculated that the epicenter of the earthquake was 3,000 miles away from New York, based on the number of seismic waves. But it turned out to be an underestimation of the magnitude of the earthquake – even if it wasn't calculated along the Earth's surface, but directly to the Earth's diameter, the remote Haiyuan was well over 3,000 miles from New York. The epicenter is relatively accurate, and it is the central monitoring station of the Lanzhou monitoring station and the earthquake disaster research center in Jinan. The "Overview and Commentary on the Earthquake on December 16 of the First Year" made by the monitoring station of the research center on the earthquake recorded in detail the tense monitoring situation of the day:

The clock came to a sudden halt, and the chandelier shook strangely. Compared to ordinary people, they (scientific researchers) immediately realized what this meant and rushed into the basement where the seismograph was installed.

The tip of the seismograph is drawing wider and wider curves, and the first wave of strong fluctuations appears at 20:09:16. After a slight calming down, the north-south magnifying pen on the seismograph was tossed aside by violent vibrations, and Father Gelky issued a warning: "Attention! The main peak of the fluctuation is about to be reached. ”

The waves arrived at 20:16. Amazingly, the intensity of the vibration was so strong that even the seismograph could not bear it, and the nib of the pen fell halfway. Although it was not possible to record all the seismic waves, it was possible to estimate the magnitude and location of the earthquake. It takes time for seismic waves to surge across the earth. Chai Chizhang, deputy chief engineer of the Ningxia Earthquake Bureau, told reporters that seismic waves are divided into three types according to their propagation methods: longitudinal waves, transverse waves, and surface waves. Their propagation speed is different, and the seismograph records these waves separately, and then roughly calculates the location and intensity of the earthquake according to the time difference and amplitude of their arrival. Seismographs at different locations will not predict the exact same range of the epicenter, and the overlapping places are likely to be the epicenters.

"How big this earthquake is, you will know if I say a few phenomena." Xie Jiarong, the old director of the Earthquake Disaster Research Center, told a reporter from Shandong Daily, "Affected by the Haiyuan earthquake, the waves on the surface of the Baltic Sea floated up to several tens of centimeters, and the transverse and longitudinal waves of the seismic waves passed through the center of the earth. "The assumptions of the epicenter at the Tokyo Earthquake Observatory in Japan and the Xujiahui Observatory in Shanghai are very consistent with the conclusions of the Central Observatory of the National Earthquake Hazard Research Center in Jinan: a mega earthquake with a magnitude of more than 8 on the Richter scale occurred in eastern Gansu.

An hour and a half later, after the calculation and review of the transistor computer, the center of the earthquake was determined to be an area within 200 miles of Haiyuan County in Gansu Province. The magnitude of the earthquake was determined to be 8.6 on the Richter scale, and 24 large and small aftershocks have occurred during this time. The lights that have been extinguished in the Government Council have been turned on again, the staff of the Government Council wearing suits and stand-up collar cadre uniforms have put down their rice bowls, or take the bus or ride a bicycle back to the department to standby, only forty minutes, ninety percent of the staff have returned to their posts, from this moment on, the government of the empire began to run at full speed, Jinan's breathing and thousands of miles away Haiyuan became synchronized, the lights of each department were lit until early in the morning, and the waiters in the telephone exchange center could only be on duty for two hours each, On the second day, I had to change shifts every hour, otherwise my voice would be speechless, and my two arms would be swollen like the thickness of my calves. The telephone line was busy that day, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Health, from the minister to the staff, were all on duty 24 hours a day, and when they were sleepy, they set up a marching bed in the office to rest for a while, and there were not a few who slept on the table with the telephone set at one end, and most of the bruises on the foreheads of the staff who went back and forth came from this, and a few of them hit the door frame by themselves.

The General Staff Headquarters has returned to the rhythm of the Sino-Japanese War; briefings and action orders have been transmitted to all military camps throughout the country by radio waves; vehicles, military trains, and even transport planes have been mobilized; bundles of military uniforms, large stacks of military quilts, tents on wagons, military canned food, and compressed biscuits have been loaded onto vehicles as if they did not need money; on the Longhai Line, Shaanxi-Gansu Line, National Highway 180, National Highway 255, and provincial-level highways in Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Mongolia, military vehicle convoys are like video clips playing in a loop, and they are constantly heading to the earthquake area. The first group to arrive at the epicenter of Haiyuan County was the "Xiao Cavalry Battalion" special service training regiment that was parachuted into place at 7:40 a.m. on the 17th. After the first company arrived, the first batch of food and first-aid medicines airdropped also arrived fifteen minutes later. Each person carried forty kilograms of supplies on their backs, and the company led by the general marched towards the county seat of Haiyuan like a camel caravan.

The scene unfolded in front of He Dazhuang and the soldiers made the special operations elites who had long been mentally prepared feel unbelievable. The ancient city wall of the nearby Great Wall was cut by the earthquake, the landform of the Loess Plateau was completely changed, the high fault was formed into a ditch, the mountains were cracked into huge mouths, and small lakes appeared on the flat land. There are various faults in the extreme earthquake zone, some of which are tens of kilometers long, and the horizontal fault distance is up to 17 meters. Stagger the ridges, cross the river, and cross the canyon. The most severely damaged dwellings in the zone where the fault unfolded, with many villages apparently razed to the ground along the way, resulting in extremely severe casualties, with only six survivors of more than 170 people in a village near the airborne zone. What they didn't know was that a fault zone was formed after the earthquake. This fault zone starts from the nitrate mouth of Guyuan, passes through Haiyuan, Xi'an Prefecture, and Ganyanchi to Xingquanbao in Jingtai County, with a total length of 220 kilometers, and the overall fault zone is 50 degrees to 70 degrees north. In the west of the dry salt pond, more than a dozen stone ridges were staggered by the fault zone of the earthquake, with a staggered distance of 2 meters, and the direction was twisted counterclockwise.

Huge fissures in the ground are like faults, piercing through and unstoppable. Ground fissures are different from faults in that there is no horizontal or vertical dislocation, and in the zone where ground fissures develop, string-like trenches or low trenches, steep ridges or depressions are formed; In some places, wide fissures have appeared that lead to guò from below. The ice layer on the surface of the earth is suspended in the air by the roots of plants, like bridges.

During an earthquake, due to the strong compression of the earth's crust, in many areas, the ground is bulging or bulging, which looks like a great wall or a tomb. In addition to these, large-scale landslides and avalanches have also occurred, and landslides mainly occur on gully slopes with relatively gentle slopes; Avalanches occur mainly in cliff areas. The landslides and collapses caused by the Haiyuan earthquake are unprecedented in any earthquake, which has a lot to do with the intensity of the earthquake and the loess area. Landslides and collapses have not only exacerbated the damage, but have also created many dammed lakes of varying sizes. Famous ones are Haizi by Haiyuan Li Jun and Seighiro in Seiji.

There are fault zones and ravines in many places in the territory of Haiyuan. Most of them are caused by earthquakes. The city wall of Haiyuan County was destroyed in that great earthquake, leaving only a 3-5 meter city foundation! The gates of the city had been blocked by rubble, but along the collapsed walls, the advance troops climbed to the top of the city. The iron-blooded battle banner was unfurled in the morning light on the ruined city, the first living object that the almost corpse-like residents of Haiyuan County saw at the end of that dark and cold night.

Sister Guo Min (a local), who struggled out of the ruins of the church in Haiyuan County, looked at the soldiers steaming in the cold morning, and she suddenly felt the brilliance of saints in those soldiers, and without thinking about it, she recorded this scene with her brushstrokes.

"It was an almost apocalyptic catastrophe, and no one could guarantee that they would have the courage and luck to live to see the sun the next day. Priest Guo Xiude and I struggled to get out from under the collapsed church, but the cold forced us to risk being buried alive again under the roof of the church to find a qiē fabric that would cover our bodies to keep them warm, and although we didn't know what would happen next, the first thing we had to do was not to freeze to death. The church is located in Xiguan, the county seat, but the noisy bazaar around it is as quiet as a cemetery (I later learned that almost none of the merchants and their families who lived in adobe houses survived, and the collapsed houses became their natural graves). Although I was choked by the cold wind and coughed violently in the morning light, in the rising sun, I thought for a moment that I saw the paladins sent by God to save his people, the golden badges on the bright red flag, and the radiant soldiers who were reflected in the morning light. I heard Priest Guo sigh softly, "Thank God we are saved!" "It was the only language I wanted to speak at that moment, but I was drowned out by the cries and shouts of Chinese all around."