Abstract: On May 22, 2021, the M7.4 Qinghai Maduo earthquake caused varying degrees of damage to Guoluo, Haixi and Yushu in Qinghai Province, as well as Ganzi in Sichuan Province. The prominent feature of the earthquake is heavy disaster, less casualties, no deaths, 333 houses collapsed. Most of the collapsed houses are old and uninhabited civil structures and brick and wood structure of rural auxiliary houses and livestock sheds. More than 13000 houses have been damaged to varying degrees. Roads, bridges and other infrastructure are also destroyed seriously. Based on the damage survey and data analysis of 55 disaster investigation points in the earthquake site, this paper expounds the seismic intensity distribution of the 2021 Qinghai Maduo M7.4 earthquake, and preliminarily analyzes the characteristics and causes of the earthquake damage, in which the vast area and sparse population are the main reasons for this earthquake damage features.

Key words: the 2021 Qinghai Maduo M7.4 earthquake, Seismic intensity, Earthquake damage characteristics