(TibetanReview.net, Jan16’25) – China’s state media confirmed that a centuries-old nunnery was 80% destroyed and a monastery structurally damaged in Dramtso Township of Dingri county as a result of the devastating earthquake of Jan 7 morning.
Tsogo (Zingkar) Chode Monastery and the 600-year-old Zombo Monastery (Dzongphub Nunnery) suffered extensive structural damage, reported China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Jan 16.
The report said most of the residences at Zombo Monastery had collapsed, making it difficult for the search and rescue personnel to track the intermittent cries for help. Rescuers were stated to have used mobile phones to determine the exact location of the buried individuals and manually dug through rubble for four hours.
The report cited Tashi Drolma, a monastery-based government official, as confirming that although over 80% of the monastery’s structures collapsed, there were no casualties.
“We will begin to rebuild the monastery,” she has said.
Although the report did not mention the extent of the damage and other details at Tsogo Chode Monastery, it quoted 53-year-old Ngakwang Yontan, one of its 16 monks, as saying, “Houses were shaking violently, … Scriptures, books and quilts fell from the shelves, and the walls collapsed. I rushed outside quickly to avoid getting hurt.”
The report said Guring (or Gurung) village was among the most affected areas, but did not say anything about casualties, injuries and damages. It only said, “By 11 am on Jan 7, just two hours after the quake, the first external support team had arrived. Within the first day, over 1,000 rescuers reached this village of about 200 people, while more than 12,000 responders were deployed across the region.”
China’s online Tibet news service eng.tibet.cn earlier said Jan 14 that a Zingkar Choede Monastery official named Thupten had lost four members of his family in Gurung village to the earthquake, which spared only its elderly couple.
That report also said the Dzongphub Nunnery was a district level protected cultural heritage site and Zingkar Choede Monastery a region-level protected site.