We analyze quantitatively and qualitatively the regional features of the earthquake disaster in Zhaotong area by mathematical statistics and horizontal comparison.By mathematical statistics,we find that the casualties,the affected population,the total area of the damaged buildings,and the direct economic loss are generally in an exponential relation with the earthquake magnitude.In the condition of the same earthquake energy,the direct economic losses caused by the earthquakes have a linear increase relation with year.By horizontal comparison,we find that the earthquake disaster in Zhaotong area are featured as ‘ small earthquake causing serious disaster’,for example,on the same condition,the disaster loss in Zhaotong may be 2 to 5 times of those in other earthquake disaster areas in Yunnan.The factors such as large population base,high population density,large amount of social wealth,low level of socio-economic development,and weak seismic performance of buildings,etc.,mainly caused serious disaster loss.In Zhaotong area,the factors such as the large-scale topographies,broken surface rock etc.caused serious secondary disasters such as collapse and landslide.