China Landslide: 500 Evacuated as Rescuers Search for Nearly 50 Trapped in Yunnan

At least 47 people were buried when a landslide struck a remote and mountainous part of southwestern China on Monday. The pre-dawn landslide hit Zhenxiong County, Yunnan province, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Around 18 households were buried, and hundreds of people were urgently evacuated from the area, state broadcaster CCTV said. China has dispatched nearly 1,000 rescue workers to the scene, along with nearly 200 rescue vehicles, the report said. Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing is leading a workgroup to the site to guide rescue works. More than 500 people have been evacuated.

‘All-out’ rescue efforts

Footage shared on social media by a local broadcaster showed emergency workers in orange jumpsuits and helmets forming ranks outside a fire station as snowflakes whirled through the air. Other images showed rescuers picking through towering piles of collapsed masonry in which a few personal belongings could be seen. Authorities did not immediately specify whether anyone had died in the landslide.

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged “all-out” rescue efforts, CCTV reported. Xi “demanded that rescue forces are organised quickly… and efforts made to reduce casualties as far as possible,” the broadcaster reported him as saying. He added that it was “necessary to properly handle the work of comforting the families of the deceased and resettling affected people”. CCTV broadcast an image it said showed a firefighter working to pull a trapped villager from inside a home affected by the disaster.

Landslides are common in Yunnan, a far-flung and often impoverished region of China where steep mountain ranges butt against the Himalayan plateau. Monday’s disaster occurred in a rural area surrounded by towering peaks dusted with snow, state media footage showed. Temperatures in Zhenxiong hovered at around minus four degrees Celsius on Monday morning, weather data showed. There was no immediate official explanation for what may have caused the landslide, which struck at 5:51 am. Efforts to establish what happened are under way, Xinhua reported.

(With agency inputs)