Almost 100 missing after China landslide
MAO COUNTY, China — Rescuers recovered 10 bodies and were still searching for 93 missing people on Sunday, a day after a massive landslide buried a picturesque mountain village in southwestern China.
More than 2,500 rescuers with detection devices and dogs were looking for signs of life amid the rubble of huge boulders that rained down on Xinmo village in Sichuan province early Saturday.
As of Sunday night, only three people — a couple and their month-old baby — had been rescued from the disaster site.
Xinmo has in recent years become a tourism destination for its picturesque scenery of homes in lush meadows tucked between steep and rugged mountains. But after the landslide, the village was reduced to rubble.
“It was as if strong winds were blowing by, or a big truck rumbled by,” said Tang Hua, a 38-year-old woman from a nearby village. “The houses were shaking, as if there were an earthquake. We rushed out and saw massive smoke. With a thundering sound, the smoke suddenly lifted. We realized it was a landslide.”
The landslide carried an estimated 636 million cubic feet of earth and rock when it slid down from steep mountains. Some of it fell from as high as a mile.
It buried 1 mile of road and blocked a 1.2-mile section of a river as it completely wiped away the village.
The Sichuan provincial government said Sunday that 10 bodies had been found, lowering an earlier figure of 15 that had been reported by state media. It also lowered the number of missing to 93, saying 15 people on an initial list of the missing were accounted for.
Experts on state media said the landslide was likely triggered by rain.