Rescue crews on Saturday raced to find survivors from a landslide in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing that killed at least eight people and left 34 missing.
The landslide occurred in Pengshui County on Friday morning on the outer edge of the Chongqing municipality, when massive amounts of rocks and soil washed down a slope, burying more than 10 residential buildings, state broadcaster CCTV said. Ten people were rescued but sent to the hospital, while more than 1,100 people have been relocated.
Photos and Associated Press videos showed that one of the fallen rocks appeared to be larger than a multi-storey building with ruins scattered across the steep terrain. One of the damaged buildings had its top part crushed and a car was seen half-buried near another building.
The landslide contained about 18,000 cubic meters of rocks and debris, and the largest single rock was around 3,000 cubic meters, Wang Chuanjun, head of Planning and Natural Resources in Pengshui County, told a news conference on Friday.
CCTV said persistent rain hit Pengshui from Friday night to Saturday morning and 19.2 centimeters (nearly 8 inches) of rainfall at a weather station. The unstable weather made the rescue operation more challenging, it said. As the rain eased slightly, rescue teams entered the site to conduct on-the-ground inspections of the collapsed buildings 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.
___
AP video producer Wu Jia contributed to this report from Chongqing.
