China Landslide: At Least 15 Killed as 120 Feared Buried in Mountain Village in Sichuan
byAssociated Press
BEIJING — At least 15 people were confirmed
dead among the more than 120 people buried by a landslide that caused
huge rocks and a mass of earth to come crashing into their homes in
southwestern China early Saturday, officials said.
The landslide, which came from a mountain,
engulfed a cluster of 62 homes and a hotel in the village of Xinmo in
Mao County at about 6 a.m. local time (6 p.m. Friday ET), the Sichuan
provincial government said. Officials said one mile of road was buried
in the disaster.
Officials leading the rescue effort told the
Chinese state news agency Xinhua that workers retrieved 15 bodies from
the debris Saturday night. The outlet said that no new signs of life
were found.
About 1,000 workers with life-detection instruments were searching for survivors.
"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.
Massive Landslide Buries at Least 100 in China0:45
The provincial government said more than 120
people were buried by the landslide. CCTV cited a rescuer as saying five
bodies had been found.
Rescuers pulled out three people, two of whom
had survived, the official Sichuan Daily newspaper said on its
microblog. The paper also said a family of three, including a month-old
baby, managed to escape just as the landslide started to hit their
house.
Qiao Dashuai told CCTV that the baby saved the
family because he was woken up by the child's crying and was going to
change the baby's diaper when he heard a noise that alerted him to the
landslide.
"We heard a strange noise at the back of our
house, and it was rather loud," Qiao said. "Wind was coming into the
room so I wanted to close the door. When we came out, water flow swept
us away instantly." He said they struggled against the flood of water
until they met medical workers who took them to a hospital. Qiao said
his parents and other relatives had not been found.
Rescuers at the site of the early morning disaster in Maoxian county, China's Sichuan province. ZHENG LEI / EPA
Mao County, or Maoxian, sits on the eastern
margin 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. The village is known locally for tourism, and Chinese
reports said it was unclear if tourists were among those buried by the
landslide.
The landslide blocked a 1.2-mile section of a
river. The provincial government said on its website that an estimated
282 million cubic feet of earth and rock — equivalent to more than 3,000
Olympic-sized swimming pools — had slid down the mountain.
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.
Search and rescue efforts were underway
involving more than 400 workers, including police. CCTV showed footage
of rescuers in bright orange uniforms using earth movers and excavators,
but also relying on ropes to pull at huge rocks and shovels to dig up
the dirt.
Provincial police sent 500 rescuers with two dozen sniffer dogs to the site, Xinhua reported.
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