building collapsed. The main lhakang [Assembly Hall] is still standing but is heavily damaged and will have to be rebuilt. He asked people there how many monks had died and was told that no one knows yet. One monk told him sixty to seventy monks had died and another told him at least thirty. There are also two villages very close to Thrangu monastery and he said that they are completely destroyed without a single house still standing so a lot of people must have died there as well. He said that Aten Rinpoche has two cousins who were killed at Thrangu monastery." The earthquake struck on April 14, 2010, and registered a magnitude of 6.9Mw (USGS, EMSC) or 7.1Ms (CEA, CENC). It originated in Yushu, Qinghai, China, at local time. According to the Xinhua News Agency, 2,698 people have been confirmed dead, 270 missing, and 12,135 injured of which 1,434 are severely injured. The epicenter was located in Rima village (), Upper Laxiu township () of Yushu County, in remote and rugged terrain, near the border of Tibet Autonomous Region. The epicenter is about 30 km from Jyekundo or Gyêgu town, the seat of Yushu County, and about 240 km from Qamdo. The epicenter was in a sparsely populated area on the Tibetan plateau that is regularly hit by earthquakes. Yushu New Thrangu Gompa For the monastery's reconstruction a new site a few kilometres further south was chosen. Its location near Mahavairocana Temple, also known by the name "Wencheng Temple", which Thrangu's monks traditionally take care of, is at the entrance of the small gorge to the main valley. The reconstruction work was financially supported by the Chinese government. The new monastery was completed in mid-August 2015. New Thrangu Monastery opens in Canada Thrangu Monastery, Canada's first traditional Tibetan Buddhist monastery, was officially opened in Richmond, British Columbia, on 25 July 2010 by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, the worldwide leader of Thrangu Monasteries. The Assembly Hall of the new monastery contains a four-metre tall gold-plated statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, "filled with precious offerings including scriptures, scrolls and sacred stones and pebbles from 108 different countries, including China(including Hong Kong and Tibet), India, Sri Lanka and Canada. The shrine hall can comfortably accommodate up to 500 people." Footnotes References Dorje, Gyurme (2009). Footprint Tibet Handbook. Footprint Books. . Kotan Publishing (2000). Mapping the Tibetan World. Kotan Publishing, 2004 reprint. . Mayhew,