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Landslide kills at least 65
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THE death toll from a landslide that engulfed an apartment building in Southwest China had grown to 65 by early yesterday, and the final death toll could rise, officials in the area said.
Hundreds of police officers, soldiers and rescue workers were digging through earth and rubble in Wulong County, some 200km from Chongqing City, in a desperate effort to find people still trapped inside the collapsed building.
More than 36 hours after tragedy struck on Tuesday evening, residents gathered by the nine-storey apartment building were gradually losing hope that their missing relatives had survived.
“My wife and I weren't at home, so we escaped the disaster," Liu Kaifeng, 36, told Xinhua. “But my 13-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son were at home, and we still haven't heard from them."
The recently-built block was obliterated by a wave of mud and rocks when a steep hillside above it subsided after several days of heavy rain, officials said.
But they insisted the building had not been built in a dangerous location.
Xinhua said experts believed the landslide was caused by loosened earth following heavy rain.
The agency quoted residents as saying there had been signs of the imminent landslide as early as Monday when large stones started rolling down the slopes, damaging parts of the apartment building.
About 7pm on Tuesday, local residents alerted county officials that a full-scale landslide might be on the way, prompting the county government to dispatch a team to evacuate people from the hillside, the agency said.
The team reached the site too late and had only one minute to start getting people out of the building before the landslide erupted, with the result that only seven people were rescued.
Xinhua said earlier the building was home to 95 people, of whom about 76 were inside when the landslide hit.
Of the 65 bodies pulled from the rubble so far, 44 had been identified.
Although rescue workers were continuing to dig through the rubble in hopes of finding survivors, the chances of finding anyone alive were slim, a hospital official said.
“The others have no chance of survival," the official told reporters. “The hill collapsed on top of the building. The whole building was buried."
The Central Government has just issued a new regulation subjecting governors and ministers to criminal or administrative punishment for serious accidents within their jurisdictions if human error is involved.(SD-Agencies)
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