Bodies pulled from China landslide
>> BEIJING: More than 120 people were buried by a landslide that caused huge rocks and a mass of earth to come crashing into their homes in a mountain village in southwestern China early yesterday, officials said.
The landslide, which came from a mountain, engulfed a cluster of 62 homes and a hotel in the village of Xinmo in Mao County at about 6am (5am, Thai time), the Sichuan provincial government said. Officials said 1.6km of road were buried in the disaster.
“It’s the biggest landslide to hit this area since the Wenchuan earthquake,” Wang Yongbo, an official leading one of the rescue efforts, told state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV). Mr Wang was referring to China’s deadliest earthquake this century, a magnitude 7.9 temblor that struck Sichuan province in May 2008, killing nearly 90,000 people.
The provincial government said more than 120 people were buried by the landslide. CCTV cited a rescuer as saying five bodies had been found. State media had earlier reported that 141 people may have been buried but did not explain why the figure had been revised.
At press time, rescuers had pulled out three people, two of whom had survived, the official Sichuan Daily newspaper said on its microblog. The paper also said a family of three, including a month-old baby, managed to escape just as the landslide started to hit their house.
Qiao Dashuai told CCTV that the baby saved the family because he was woken up by the child’s crying and was going to change the baby’s diaper when he heard a noise that alerted him to the landslide.
“We heard a strange noise at the back of our house, and it was rather loud,” Mr Qiao said. “Wind was coming into the room so I wanted to close the door. When we came out, water flow swept us away instantly.”
He said they struggled against the flood of water until they met medical workers who took them to a hospital. Mr Qiao said his parents and other relatives had not been found.
Mao County, or Maoxian, sits on the eastern margin of the Tibetan plateau and is home to about 110,000 people, according to the government’s website. Most residents are of the Qiang ethnic minority. The village is known locally for tourism, and Chinese reports said it was unclear if tourists were among those buried by the landslide.
The landslide blocked a 2km section of a river. The provincial government said on its website that an estimated 8 million cubic metres of earth and rock — equivalent to more than 3,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — had slid down the mountain.
Local police captain Chen Tiebo said the heavy rains that hit the region in recent days had triggered the landslide. “There are several tonnes of rock” over the village, he told CCTV. “It’s a seismic area here. There’s not a lot of vegetation.”
Trees can help absorb excess rain and prevent landslides.
Tao Jian, director of the local weather service, told CCTV that the 2008 earthquake had “weakened the mountain” and that “a weak rain can provoke a geological catastrophe”.
President Xi Jinping called for rescuers to “spare no effort” in their search for survivors, according to CCTV.
The Sichuan Daily said rescuers made contact with a villager buried under the rubble who answered her mobile phone when they called and burst into tears. The woman was in the bedroom of her home when the landslide hit the village, and rescuers were trying to reach her, the report said.
Search and rescue efforts involved more than 400 workers, including police. CCTV showed footage of rescuers using earth movers and excavators but also relying on ropes to pull at huge rocks and shovels to dig up the dirt. Provincial police sent 500 rescuers with two dozen sniffer dogs to the site, Xinhua News Agency reported.