Landslide survivor rescued after 60 hours

Tian was confirmed as one of the 76 listed as officially missing after the disaster, the Guangdong fire department said.

The massive landslide buried dozens of buildings when it swept through an industrial park in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Following surgery, Tian is conscious and stable, hospital President Wang Guangming said, adding that he is extremely weak, dehydrated and has sustained several soft tissue injuries and multiple fractures.

The first person was pulled alive from the rubble of a landslide that buried 33 buildings in Shenzhen, China. Tian was located at about 3 a.m. with his leg crushed by concrete, but his mind lucid and his speech clear, the news service said. One of Tian’s ankles had been stuck in the debris and medical experts are doing their best to save his foot.

He was given oxygen and an intravenous drip while rescuers removed the rubble around him by hand, a firefighting official told Xinhua.

“He told the soldiers who rescued him, there is another survivor close by”, state news agency Xinhua said, although it later reported rescuers had found another body rather than a survivor. Another person, whom rescuers pulled out alive along with Tian, was later pronounced dead.

The landslide happened when a huge man-made mound of earth and construction waste collapsed after heavy rains.

The Shenzhen landslide is the latest in a series of fatal accidents in the world’s most populous country, and comes just months after a massive chemical blast in the industrial city of Tianjin killed nearly 200 people.

On Wednesday, China’s cabinet established a team, headed by Minister of Land and Resources Jiang Daming, to investigate the landslide.

Residents have raised questions about why officials did not act to stop the growing mountain of construction waste, which they said they had feared was risky.

Authorities arrested 12 company employees and 11 government officials in connection with that disaster.

Authorities have detained the vice chairman of a Shenzhen-based company, Yixianglong Investment, under suspicion that it had jurisdiction over the slag heap that collapsed and buried the area, the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper reported Tuesday.

“We never thought it could be risky”, the man said. “They’re still carting away the mud”, he said.