Earthquakes near Tangshan through history

The deadliest was not the strongest: a magnitude 7.5 on July 27, 1976 (17 km NE of Penguanzhuang, China), for which NOAA records 242,769 deaths. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 5 here, back to 1679. NOAA records deaths in 3 of the events here, 255,948 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 7.4 on July 28, 1976 (6 km SW of Linxi, China). NOAA’s record here begins on September 2, 1679 with an earthquake (Hebei Province).

• July 28, 1976Earthquake · M 7.46 km SW of Linxi, ChinaUSGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• July 27, 1976Earthquake · M 7.517 km NE of Penguanzhuang, China · 242,769 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• September 2, 1679Earthquake · M 8.0 (est.)Hebei Province · 13,162 deaths (NOAA)NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia

• An event counts for Tangshan 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