Edited by Deepali Verma
There has been an increase in the death toll from a landslide in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan to 11. Rescue workers, battling the extreme cold wave conditions and freezing temperatures amid snow, are working to locate and rescue other buried people, as per the reports from Reuters.
Rescuers worked all night sifting through deep mounds of earth at the landslide’s site in Zhenxiong County, the news agency reported citing the state-owned China Central Television (CCTV).
Close to 1,000 rescue workers equipped with 45 rescue dogs and 120 vehicles, such as the excavators, loaders and transport vehicles, engaged in carrying out search and rescue work at the site. Approximately 33 firefighting vehicles as well as 10 loading machines were mobilised to search for the missing. Additionally, more than 200 tents, 400 quilts, 600 cotton coats and 14 sets of emergency lighting equipment were also provided.
The rescuers couldn’t employ large machines for the evacuation process owing to the unstable soil in the terrain.
“If the excavation continues to unload below, the top may likely collapse. Currently, carrying out the large-scale mechanical operations is very difficult to rescue on site,” as per the worker on the site.
Hospitalisation took place for two more people as they suffered head and body injuries, the national health commission said.
The landslide struck a remote and mountainous part in two villages in Zhaotong city at 05:51 local time (21:51 GMT) on January 22, trapping a minimum of 47 people from 18 households. Eight of the missing were found dead, as per the Zhaotong Daily that is a local state-owned media outlet.
Over 500 people were evacuated from their homes with the help of the 1,000 dispatched rescue workers to the site.
President Xi Jinping, in the interim, has called for an “all-out” rescue in the area experiencing sub-zero temperatures. An allocation of disaster relief funds nearing 50 million yuan (about USD 7 million) has come through from the government to support the disaster relief and emergency rescue work.
There is not much clarity on why the landslide occurred, except the fact that the remote, mountainous region is prone to them. The preliminary investigation by an expert group revealed that the landslide was triggered by the collapse of a steep cliff-top area that measured approximately 100 metres in width and 60 metres in height, said the report.
The Ministry of Emergency Management has introduced an upgrade to the emergency response level to the second-highest level from the Level-III emergency response for disaster relief initiated by the Provincial Commission for Disaster Reduction right after the landslide.
Video clips going around on social media showed rescuers walking on piles of rubble against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains.
