Landslide in China Is Feared to Have Buried Over 100 People
Landslide in China Is Feared to Have Buried Over 100 People
BEIJING — More than 100 people in southwestern China
are feared to have been buried under an avalanche of mud and rocks when
a hillside collapsed after heavy rains on Saturday, Chinese news media
reported.
The
landslide struck Xinmo, a village in Sichuan Province, early in the
morning. Although the number of possible deaths remained unclear,
officials estimated that 40 homes appeared to have been engulfed, Sichuan Online, a provincial news agency reported. At that hour, many residents would probably have been in their homes.
“About 100 people are feared to be buried,” Xinhua, the official news agency, said in a brief report.
The Communist Party secretary of Sichuan, Wang Dongming, and other
officials were rushing to the village, in a sign of the gravity of the
disaster, Sichuan Daily said.
Photographs from the scene
indicated that a thinly vegetated side of a hill had toppled into a
narrow valley, creating a wall of muddy earth and stones that covered a
road and choked off a small river.
Mao County, which includes Xinmo, announced a state of emergency and
said rescuers were heading to the village. Early photographs showed that
a few bulldozers and dozens of rescuers and medical workers had arrived
in the village.
Western
Sichuan Province, where the disaster hit, is a mountainous and remote
part of the country, and the region has had landslides before. A
landslide in the province in 2013 buried about 40 people; another in 2014 killed at least 11 people.
In 2008, a powerful earthquake
with an epicenter in Sichuan left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing
and presumed dead after the tremors set off landslides and blocked
rivers, which multiplied the risks from more slides.
Rescuers
said the latest slide had also created a potentially dangerous
1.2-mile-long blockage along the river near the buried village.
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