Wenchuan County


Wenchuan County is a county in Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, People's Republic of China.
The county has an area of and a population of 106,119 as of 2005.
Wolong National Nature Reserve is a protected area located in Wenchuan County, which houses more than 150 highly endangered giant pandas. The Wolong Special Administrative Region is also located here.
The county was the site of the epicentre and one of the areas most severely hit by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, also known as the Wenchuan earthquake.

Wenchuan earthquake

On May 12, 2008, an earthquake with moment magnitude 7.9 hit the Sichuan Province, with epicentre located in the town of Yingxiu, in Wenchuan county. The county was therefore one of the areas most severely affected by the earthquake. In Chinese, the earthquake is named after the county, which made its name resonate across the nation. In the county, 15,941 people died, 34,583 were injured, and 7,474 were still missing as of June 6, 2008. The seismic intensity was the highest, reaching level XI in the China Seismic Intensity Scale. After the earthquake, the central government enforced stricter requirements for seismic design in this area. The earthquake also caused many landslides, some of which remained active for years and generated destructive debris flows during the summer rainstorms, which increased the death toll and slowed reconstruction and recovery of the communities in the county.

Subdivisions

Wenchuan County has eight towns and four townships:

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