A museum preserving ruins and providing information about a major earthquake in the area will beset up in Golmud, a vital city in the western part of Qinghai Province in northwest China.

According to the Qinghai provincial bureau of seismology on Wednesday, the construction of the quake museum was just part of a plan the seismological branch of Golmud City worked out to protect and develop the ruins of an quake measuring 8.1 on the Richter Scale which jolted west of the Mount Kunlun Pass inside the province on Nov. 14, 2001.

The Nov. 14 quake was the biggest on the Chinese mainland in the past half century and also the worst so far in the 21st century.

Though damage was very limited since it occurred in the Hoh Xil "no-man's land" north of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the energy it erupted left a 400 km-plus fracture belt on the ground extending even further west beyond Bukadpan Peak, with the width ranging from dozens of meters to 1,000 meters at the southern foot of the Kunlun Mountains.

The China Seismological Bureau has organized four survey trips,including participation from scientific workers from Japan and France, to study the quake ruins and obtain essential data to fillthe country's lack of parameters of kinematics about surface fracture zones in earthquakes north of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

The research will also offer crucial information on the on-going changes in the earth's crust at the Qinghai-Tibet plateau and its adjacent areas, said Xu Xiwei, a noted research fellow with the Institute of Geology under the bureau.

Seismological investigations will also provide China with important references for shunning a quake-prone active fault zone and reducing quake losses while locating and building major projects in the country's campaign to explore the vast west, added Xu, who is also China's chief scientist in activity structure research.

Wang Zanjun, engineer-in-chief with the prestigious Qinghai Provincial Institute of Engineering Earthquake, who has inspected the major quake ruins four times, endorsed the protection plan.

"The fracture belt left by the major quake is a priceless natural legacy of humankind, and is of high value for scientific research and sightseeing, so it should be protected," said Wang.

The quake ruins protection plan will cost about 4.4 million yuan (some US$530,000) and be completed in one year and a half. The plan will be executed in two phases.

During the first phase, the surface fractures will be recorded and a commemorative monument will be erected, and protective facilities will be added at typical sections of the fracture, including architecture, water drainage works.

A state-level earthquake park and a quake museum will be built during the second phase of construction.

The quake museum is expected to have three halls where part of the major quake ruins will be exhibited, documentaries featuring simulated earthquakes will be displayed and knowledge about earthquakes will be imparted.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 3, 2003)