The rehousing project for the survivors of the devastating earthquake Apr 14 in Yulshul County of Qinghai Province will take up to three years, so most of the homeless, numbering over 120,000, would be temporarily sheltered in about 50,000 quilted tents, this winter, reported China’s official Xinhua news agency .Kyegudo Town covers 808 sq km and sits on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with an average elevation of 4,000 meters. The report said temperatures easily drop to freezing point at night during the winter.

The report said Pre-fab homes, widely used for the survivors in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, had been mostly ruled out for Yulshul because they were too expensive.

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake on April 14 destroyed most of the structures in Kyegudo Town, the quake's epicentre, leaving almost 3,000 people dead or missing and more than 120,000 homeless.

The report said that on Sep 8, the largest rehousing project so far for the survivors of the earthquake was begun. The Denyingge residential project in Gyegu (Tibetan: Kyegudo) town, in the heart of Yulshul county, covers 47 hectares.

However, the report said, the county government gave no timetable as to when construction would be completed and did not say how many people the new homes would accommodate.