BEIJING – Three people remain missing after a landslide which killed 43, including seven from a single family, struck a remote village in southwestern China, state media said Saturday.Another two victims were sent to hospital after being rescued from the debris from the landslip on Friday which engulfed 16 homes in the village of Gaopo, the official news agency Xinhua said.
It reported that 19 children were among those caught in the disaster.
Rescuers continued their search for the three missing people in the early hours of Saturday morning, with the help of lamps
and life detectors in freezing conditions, Xinhua said.
The landslide had been triggered by prolonged rain and snow, according to initial geologists’ reports.
Photos posted on Yunnan Web, run by the Yunnan provincial government, showed rescuers in orange uniforms digging into wide
swathes of mud against a backdrop of snow-covered, terraced hills.
A video posted on a Chinese social networking site appeared to show a group of villagers digging through thick mud and debris
to uncover a body, which was carried away on a stretcher.
“The landslide, which brought about several hundred thousand cubic metres of watery mud to the village, buried all of the
houses there,” Xinhua quoted a local rescue team leader, Sun Anfa, as saying.
The conditions “created great difficulties for rescue efforts amid low temperatures”, he added.
More than 1,000 rescuers were sent to the disaster site, which was estimated to be 300 metres (1,000 feet) long, 80 metres
wide and 30 metres deep, according to authorities.
Snow was visible in images of the rescue, in an area that has experienced unusually low temperatures in recent weeks during
what authorities have called China’s coldest winter in 28 years.
(Source:BSS/AFP)
