BEIJING—The huge earthquake that struck China on Monday was a chilling reminder of the country’s seismic vulnerability, forever linked to the devastation of the Tangshan quake which killed more than 240,000.

Although the immediate death toll of Monday’s quake was not on the scale of the tragedy that hit the northern coal mining city more than 30 years ago, news of the 7.8-magnitude tremor in Sichuan province would have brought back painful memories for survivors.

The Tangshan earthquake was one of the 20th century’s deadliest natural disasters.

Measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale—the same as Monday’s quake—the Tangshan tremor destroyed more than 90 percent of the buildings in the city in Hebei province, after it struck at 3:42 in the morning of July 28, 1976, shaking the region for 15 seconds.

Nearly one quarter of the city’s one million residents died in the quake and the subsequent 7.1 degree aftershock that struck 15 hours after the initial jolt, according to official figures.

However, the death toll was only announced three years after the event with the secrecy leading to widespread speculation that the actual death toll could be up to three times higher.

Failed to heed warning

The US Geological Survey says on its website that 655,000 people may have died in the Tangshan earthquake.

Controversy lingers over whether the Chinese government could have done more to prevent the enormous loss of life after receiving warnings from seismologists of an imminent quake in the area.

While authorities in Beijing and Tangshan failed to heed the warnings, officials from Qinglong county, about 70 kilometers from Tangshan, did.

Their reaction meant nearly zero fatalities in the county of more than 470,000 people despite more than 180,000 buildings being flattened.

Monday’s quake struck 93 km from Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province and a major population center with more than 12 million people, and about 260 km from Chongqing and its population of 30 million.

China is particularly sensitive to major earthquakes as it lies on top of three tectonic plates that are constantly shifting against each other. In 1920 and again in 1927, separate earthquakes each left some 200,000 dead.

Around two thirds of China’s big cities are located in high-risk quake zones, with more people packing into them.