Rescue teams in southern China are battling the clock in finding dozens more missing after a giant landslide that hit Jingping village in Yibin city, Sichuan province early on Saturday, leaving at least one dead and many others unaccounted for. Heavy rainfall triggered the disaster that left another 28 others missing and ten homes buried.
The rescue team has armed police, firefighters, and medical teams of up to 1,000 personnel. President Xi Jinping called on the authorities to do everything possible to minimize casualties, actively manage the aftermath of the accident, and guard social stability.
Rescue teams, with the help of locals who are better aware of the lay of the land, are using drones and life-detection radars as they comb through the rubble left from collapsed buildings. As many as 360 people have so far been evacuated, with two injured persons rescued.
According to preliminary appraisals by local officials, the landslide had something to do with recent heavy rain and certain conditions of the geological environment that changed the slide to a debris flow. This set up a serious accumulation of debris stretching over 1.2 kilometers, and its total volume exceeded 100,000 cubic meters.
Chinese Vice-Premier Liu Guozhong visited the site to oversee the rescue work and interacted with affected residents. He urged that the missing be searched for in a painstaking way, and scientific evaluations about the security of ongoing operations are necessary given that the risks of further collapses still exist.
China has set aside 80 million yuan-about $11 million-for disaster relief and reconstruction work. However, landslides, triggered usually by heavy rain or bad construction, are not new for the country. Over the years, casualties occurred, such as that in the province of Yunnan last year.
