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boulders that had swept down mountainsides.
• Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited the quake area on Saturday and was shown on television consoling survivors and walking through hospitals.
• Wen warned of aftershocks and the "need to guard against secondary and geological hazards," apparently referring to the possibility of landslides. Many of the roads in the area are at the bottom of valleys.
• Though quakes occur in the area frequently, buildings in rural areas and in fast-growing smaller cities and towns are often constructed poorly. A magnitude-7.9 quake that hit Sichuan province, just north of Yunnan, killed nearly 90,000 people in 2008, with many of the deaths blamed on poorly built structures, including schools.
• Yunnan's civil affairs department said Friday's quakes destroyed 6,650 houses and damaged 430,000 others. It said direct economic losses in Yunnan so far are estimated at 3.5 billion yuan ($551 million).

• Yunnan Gov. Li Jiheng said that as long as there was "a ray of hope" of finding anyone alive, all efforts would be made.
• Xinhua said more than 21,000 tents, 31,000 quilts and 26,000 winter coats had been sent to Yunnan. The government said thousands of soldiers were helping the rescue effort in the area, which is largely inhabited by members of the Yi ethnic minority.
• Mobile phone service was down and regular phone lines disrupted. Phones were cut off to clinics in four villages in Qiaoshan, another town in Yiliang, which has about half a million people.
• Xinhua said that so far no deaths had been reported in neighboring Guizhou, but that homes had been damaged or destroyed there.
• Friday's quakes were relatively shallow, about 10 kilometers (six miles) deep, creating an intense shaking despite their moderate magnitude.
• By comparison, the magnitude-7.6 quake in Costa Rica this past week was 40 kilometers (25 miles) below the surface, which, combined with strict building codes, kept damage and deaths to a minimum.
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