First body pulled from Shenzhen landslide, at least 81 still missing

Rescue workers in southern China are still digging through rubble from an enormous urban mudslide, searching for 91 people missing in Sunday’s disaster at an industrial park in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

Rescue workers were detecting signs of life from beneath the mud on December 21 and a fleet of excavators was trying to dig down to some of the 33 buried buildings to reach people who were trapped, said Yang Shengjun, director of the city’s construction bureau.

Just seven people were rescued overnight and 13 were hospitalised, including three with life-threatening injuries. One video shows a tile-clad, three-story building collapsing in a cloud of smoke.

When it was all over, mud as deep as 33 feet covered an area of 450,000 square yards, authorities reported.

He said that his home and adjacent workshop were swallowed up by the landslide, and that his mother had fractured a bone in her shoulder when her grandson yanked her out of the encroaching mud.

“The wall of mud came down and hit us within minutes, it was so fast”, said Jiang Xuemin, 44, who lived and worked in the industrial park. Besides, a gas pipeline exploded during the landslide.

By early morning Tuesday, the number of missing in the disaster in Guangming New District was reduced to 80 from 85, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily cited government officials as saying.

The ministry said large amount of soil and waste from the Hongao construction site was dumped there. “The collapsed entity was a man-made pile, and the original hill did not slide”, it added. On Sunday, Xi, now president, ordered officials to “make every effort to reduce the numbers of casualties”.

Those who remain missing include 51 males and 25 females, said Liu at a press conference.

Around 900 people were moved out of harm’s way before the landslide struck.

It was the fourth preventable accident in the past year, following a New Year’s Eve stampede in Shanghai that killed dozens; the capsizing of a cruise ship on the Yangtze River that left almost 400 dead; and an explosion in the port city of Tianjin that killed more than 50.

Human error has been suspected or confirmed in all three previous disasters, pointing to a lack of regulatory oversight and an often callous attitude toward safety in China despite the threat of harsh penalties.

The Shenzhen government said 600 people had been relocated.

The soil reportedly had been dug and piled up nearby in the past years as part of construction work.