Man Rescued After 60 Hours Trapped Under Rubble

A woman, who is a relative of several missing people, cries at the site of a landslide which hit an industrial park on Sunday in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, December 22, 2015.

More than 4,000 rescue workers were digging up 16 different locations.

Tian Zeming, 19, was rescued around 6.30 a.m. (local time) and rushed to the hospital, Xinhua reported. However, it later reported that rescuers found another body rather than a survivor.

A young man has been found alive after spending more than 60 hours under a massive landslide in southern China, having apparently been saved by a door that trapped his foot and gave him the space to survive.

Tian has had surgery and is in a stable condition in hospital, though he may lose a foot, the Xinhua report added.

He was first located buried underground by fireman using three separate life detectors at about 3:30am on Wednesday, said Zhou Qiang, the official in charge of the rescue efforts.

“He told the soldiers who rescued him, there is another survivor close by”, Xinhua said. Another person, whom rescuers pulled out alive along with Tian, was later pronounced dead.

No official death toll has been given by authorities so far, but according to state media and the official social media accounts of local officials, three bodies have so far been found.

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

33 buildings were also buried under the rubble, containing mud and construction waste.

In an announcement dated July 10, officials said work at the site was not being carried out according to approved plans and ordered the Hongao Construction Waste Dump to “speed up” work to bring its operations into line.

The vice-president of dump site company Shenzhen Yixianglong Investment and Development was detained on Tuesday afternoon, China Radio International reported.

In August, a series of blasts at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin, a municipality near Beijing, killed more than 100 people and injured almost 800. “They’re still carting away the mud”, he said.

Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Land and Resources raised the geological disaster emergency response to Level One on Tuesday morning, the highest alarm the government can raise of its four levels of emergency responses.