An earthquake killed at least 127 people in a mountainous area of northwestern China, officials and state media said on Tuesday, crumpling buildings while residents slept inside and sending people rushing into a frigid night.

Rescuers were searching for survivors in rural Jishishan County in Gansu province, the epicenter of the quake, officials from Gansu said at a news conference Tuesday. They said the quake, which struck at 11:59 p.m. Monday, had killed 113 people in the province and injured more than 500 others.

Thirteen people in the city of Haidong in neighboring Qinghai province were also killed, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The quake had a magnitude of 5.9, according to the US Geological Survey, though it was measured at 6.2 by the China Earthquake Administration. Photos and videos shared by state media showed brick houses that had caved in and bedrooms buried in rubble. Hours later, rescuers were still digging people out, according to CCTV, the state broadcaster.

The quake damaged 15,000 houses and knocked out water, electricity and transportation links in some parts of Gansu, which, like much of the country, is enduring a cold snap. The temperature in Jishishan during the quake was almost minus 20° Celsius, or about minus 4° Fahrenheit, according to state media.

In interviews with state media outlets, residents recounted being jolted awake and fleeing into the cold with barely enough time to grab extra layers of clothing.

Photos showed people in a plaza wrapped in thick comforters.

On social media, people who said they were at the quake site reported that they had started bonfires in their yards or set fire to cardboard boxes to keep warm. They described the shock of finding out that neighbors or friends had died and trying to assess the damage to their homes.

Several residents told Jimu News, a site affiliated with Hubei province, that they expected to spend the night in their cars, driving away from the epicenter. In Gansu’s provincial capital, Lanzhou, 161km away, a college student told The Paper, a Shanghai party-affiliated outlet, that the closets in her eighth-floor dorm room had shaken, and that students had felt aftershocks as they fled downstairs from the initial quake.

Some risked running back into the building later for more clothing because of the cold, she said.

On Tuesday morning, rescue workers had set up rows of tents in the main squares of villages affected by the quake, according to CCTV.

New York Times News Service