Chinese rescuers use explosives to clear boulders trapping landslide victims
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Rescue workers carrying a casualty during a search for survivors at the site of a landslide along the Wujiang river in Chongqing on July 17.
PHOTO: REUTERS
BEIJING – Rescue teams in south-western China used explosives on July 20 to blast through heavy boulders hampering efforts to reach 34 people reported missing for three days after a landslide during torrential rain in an area famed for its natural beauty.
China is one of the most landslide-prone countries in the world, and eight people died in the disaster on July 17 in the county of Pengshui, some 270km from the high-rise urban centre of the sprawling municipality of Chongqing.
The blasting operation on July 20 shattered a massive boulder in television images shown by state broadcaster CCTV, which added that the mission had entered a “deep rescue phase”, although it gave no immediate details.
The effort followed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call for scientific search and rescue operations for the missing, as well as a swift investigation into the cause of the landslide.
The authorities evacuated more than 1,100 people after the landslide in the county home to about 500,000 people, where many communities cling to steep hillsides that hug the Wujiang river.
In the aftermath, video clips and photographs showed a portion of the collapsed mountainside cascading into the river, cutting off the main street of the narrow hillside township.
The site of the landslide in Pengshui county in Chongqing, China, on July 17.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The authorities have sent several teams to investigate hidden geological dangers as well as to monitor the risk of secondary disasters, the official news agency Xinhua said on July 18.
With heavy to torrential rain forecast through July 20 across multiple provinces, the authorities have called for stronger safeguards in high-risk areas made vulnerable by abundant groundwater, and intensive construction.
Eight small and medium-sized rivers in Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Anhui and Shanghai are currently above flood warning levels, CCTV said on July 20.
Intense summer rainfall, coupled with rapid urbanisation and construction, as well as frequent tectonic activity, are the key contributing factors to disasters in China, a country where mountains, hills and plateaus make up two-thirds of the land mass.
Over the past decade, a total of about 294 people have been killed nationwide in at least five major deadly landslides.
The worst such incident killed more than 70 after the December 2015 collapse of a massive pile of construction debris at an industrial park in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen. REUTERS
