(Yicai) Aug. 2 -- Twenty-one people were injured as a 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck China's eastern Shandong province in the early hours of yesterday.

There is only a small possibility of aftershocks following the main temblor that shook the city of Dezhou at 2.33 a.m., Liu Xiqiang, deputy director of the provincial earthquake bureau said at a press conference.

Some 126 houses collapsed but water, electricity, and telecoms infrastructure are working, CCTV News reported the same day. Villagers at the epicenter have already gotten back to normal life, according to a report on news website Ecns.cn.

A Dezhou resident surnamed Zhang told Yicai that the more than 20-story building where they were staying swayed back and forth by about a meter during the quake.

The residents of other cities such as Beijing and Tianjin, Hebei province, as well as Xuzhou, a city 500 kilometers away in Jiangsu province, also felt the ground shake overnight.

Northern China is in the flood season, so local governments should prepare for downpours and floods after the quake as it would be hard to cope with two unexpected natural disasters at the same time, according to Xu Xiwei, founding director of the National Institute of Natural Hazards.

Editor: Emmi Laine