Landslide leaves 15 dead, 100-plus missing in China
MAO COUNTY, China — Crews searching through the night in the rubble left by a landslide that buried a mountain village under tons of soil and rocks in southwestern China on Saturday found 15 bodies, but more than 100 more people remained missing.
About 3,000 rescuers were using detection devices and dogs to look for signs of life in an area that once held 62 homes and a hotel, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.
“We won’t give up as long as there is a slim of chance,” the agency quoted an unidentified searcher as saying.
The provincial government of Sichuan released the names of the 118 missing people on Sunday. It’s unclear whether the 15 bodies have been identified.
Relatives were sobbing as they awaited news of their loved ones. A woman in a nearby village told The Associated Press that she had no information on her relatives in Xinmo, the mountain village that was buried.
Xu Zhiwen, executive deputy governor of the Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba, the region where the landslide struck about 6 a.m. Saturday local time, said that all 142 tourists who were visiting a site in Xinmo have been found alive.
Officials said a mile of road was 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. 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.
Xinmo is in Mao County, or Maoxian, which is on the eastern edge 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.
Experts told CCTV that the landslide was likely triggered by rain. A meteorologist interviewed by CCTV said there was light rain in the area that would continue for a few days.
The Sichuan Daily said rescuers made contact with a villager buried under the rubble who answered her cellphone 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.