Earthquakes near Pingliang through history

The deadliest was not the strongest: a magnitude 7.9 on December 16, 1920 (125 km E of Baiyin, China), for which NOAA records 235,502 deaths. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 11 here, back to AD 143. NOAA records deaths in 7 of the events here, 346,003 in all. NOAA’s record here begins in October 143 with an earthquake (Gansu Province).

• December 16, 1920Earthquake · M 7.9125 km E of Baiyin, China · 235,502 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• July 21, 1654Earthquake · M 8.0 (est.)Gansu Province: Tianshui · 10,400 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI
• October 143Earthquake · M 7.0 (est.)Gansu ProvinceNOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Pingliang when it began within 100 km of its centre, or 200 km for an earthquake of magnitude 7 or more. Damage can reach further.
• USGS counts here start at magnitude 6: the catalogue’s smaller quakes thin out going back, where few instruments listened.
• NOAA lists significant events only: earthquakes that killed, did about $1 million of damage, reached magnitude 7.5 or intensity X, or raised a tsunami, and eruptions and tsunamis by like measures. Magnitudes before 1900 are its estimates from written accounts.
• Deaths are NOAA’s total for each event, wherever people died, its tsunami and fires included. A tsunami counts the dead its runup records give for this place: NOAA’s total for a tsunami includes its source quake’s.
• A tsunami from elsewhere counts where one of its runups killed or rose a metre or more.
• Counted to October 19, 2026, as is the map. The last 30 days ask USGS again.

How the layers work, where their data comes from and what they can’t tell you: Earthquakes, live, The world through history