Rescue teams in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing are in a desperate race against time to locate survivors after a devastating landslide claimed at least eight lives and left 34 people missing.
The disaster struck Pengshui County on Friday morning, unleashing a torrent of rocks and soil that engulfed more than ten residential buildings on the outskirts of the municipality.
Ten individuals were pulled from the debris and hospitalised, while over 1,100 residents have been forced to evacuate their homes.
The sheer scale of the destruction was evident in images and videos, which depicted one fallen rock appearing larger than a multi-storey building, with wreckage strewn across the steep terrain.
A car was seen half-buried, and the upper section of one building was completely crushed.
Officials confirmed the landslide involved approximately 18,000 cubic metres of material, with the largest single rock alone estimated at 3,000 cubic metres, according to Wang Chuanjun, head of Planning and Natural Resources in Pengshui County.
Persistent heavy rainfall, measuring nearly 8 inches (19.2cm) between Friday night and Saturday morning, severely hampered rescue operations.
State broadcaster CCTV reported that the unstable weather conditions made the search particularly challenging. However, as the rain eased slightly, emergency crews were able to access the site to conduct thorough inspections of the collapsed structures and riverbank areas.
While rescue operations were being carried out on one side of the massive rocks, teams will later need to look beneath the rocks, where they may face the risk of injury from the boulders becoming unstable and sliding, CCTV reported.
Once the search around the rocks is complete, officers will drill into the boulders and fill the holes with explosives to break them apart, it said.
China’s National Development and Reform Commission on Saturday allocated a relief fund of 30 million yuan ($4.4 million) to support the restoration of infrastructure and public services facilities following the disaster.
The rain-triggered landslide occurred near a section of the Wujiang River, which cuts through karst mountains peppered with small towns and terraces.
Pengshui County is located in the southeast part of Chongqing, bordering the provinces of Hubei and Guizhou.
