More than 120 people are feared dead after a mountainside collapsed over a village in rural China. After hours of rescue efforts, emergency operations have only found few survivors.
Rescue crews are scrambling Saturday to save villagers trapped under rubble after heavy rain triggered a landslide at the village of Xinmo, located in Maoxian County in Sichuan province.
A couple and a baby were rescued and taken to hospital hours after the disaster. Rescuers have found another survivor but were still trying to reach him. The bodies of 15 people killed in the landslide were found, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency. State media had earlier stated that 141 people were believed to be buried under the rocks but that number was then revised down.
Images from the scene showed bulldozers and heavy diggers moving debris and boulders that swept into a valley, blocking a 2-kilometer (1.25-mile) section of river. Some 400 people from the police, military and fire services are reported to be taking part in the rescue efforts. Chinese President Xi Jinping called on rescuers to “spare no effort” in their search for survivors.
Geological catastrophe
A spokesperson for the Maoxian government said in a statement that emergency crews were responding “to a first class catastrophic geological disaster.”
One rescue worker told the broadcaster that an estimated 3 million cubic meters (105 million cubic feet) of earth and rock had slid down the mountain and buried the town. That would be enough to fill more than 1,000 Olympic swimming pools.
Xinmo had about 40 homes and relied mainly on tourism. It remains unclear whether tourists were in the village when the mountainside collapsed. The Sichuan province is also known to be prone to earthquakes. In 2008, nearly 70,000 people died when an 8.0 magnitude tremor hit Sichuan’s Wenchuan County.
The director of the local weather services, Tao Jian, told CCTV that the 2008 earthquake had “weakened the mountain” over Xinmo and that even “a weak rain can provoke a geological catastrophe.”
Source: Deutsche Welle. Read full information.
26 June, 2017
