Teams comb debris of mountain village for slide survivors
BEIJING — China mounted a major rescue effort Saturday with 118 people still missing after a landslide caused by torrential rain destroyed a mountain village in the southwestern province of Sichuan, state media reported.
Just 15 bodies had been recovered by late Saturday.
The landslide hit the village of Xinmo in Maoxian county around 5 a.m. Saturday, burying 62 houses, according to the Sichuan provincial government. Three survivors — a couple and their month-old baby — were rescued and taken to the hospital.
Qiao Dashuai said they survived only because his infant son woke him up.
“It was after 5 a.m. and my son was crying, so I got up to change his diaper,” he told China Central Television. “Then I heard a loud noise from the back. I thought it was the wind, so I went to close the door, but air and water came in, and rocks landed in the living room.”
Qiao said he and his wife grabbed their son and ran out of the house.
The rest of the village was obliterated, and hopes of finding anyone else alive appeared slim.
“When I got to Xinmo village around 6 a.m., there was only one house in the entire village that was still visible,” Li Yuanjun, a local official, told the Sichuan Daily newspaper. “Everything else was buried by rocks and mud.”
Zhang Liancheng, who lives in a nearby village, said the landslide buried eight members of his family. “It was raining, and the house was shaking,” he told the local newspaper Huaxi Metropolis Daily. “It was very foggy, and I could only see something like a fire pushing toward Xinmo village.”
Chen Tiebo, a local police official, told CCTV that there were more people in the village than usual because students were home for the summer holiday.
Some 140 tourists were evacuated from nearby villages after the landslide, thepaper.cn website reported.
Maoxian county is largely inhabited by members of the small Qiang ethnic group, known for building watchtowers and rope bridges in their mountainous land.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an allout rescue effort, state media reported.
The Maoxian county government said almost 2,000 people, including soldiers, police and medical workers, were involved in rescue operations, with 31 pieces of equipment including bulldozers and diggers.