On this picture taken from video footage run by China's CCTV, rescue employees search via the rubble after a landslide in Liangshui village in southwest China's Yunnan province on Monday, January 22. 2024.
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On this picture taken from video footage run by China's CCTV, rescue employees search via the rubble after a landslide in Liangshui village in southwest China's Yunnan province on Monday, January 22. 2024.
AP
BEIJING – A landslide in southwest China's Yunnan province on Monday buried 47 individuals, killing at the least two, and compelled the evacuation of 200 others amid freezing temperatures and falling snow.
The catastrophe occurred shortly earlier than 6 am within the village of Liangshui within the northeastern a part of Yunnan province. Rescue efforts had been underway to search out the victims buried in 18 separate homes, the Zhenxiong County Publicity Division mentioned.
Two our bodies had been pulled from the rubble, in accordance with state broadcaster CCTV. The reason for the landslide was not instantly often known as survivors and rescuers struggled with snow and freezing temperatures that had been anticipated to persist for at the least the following three days.
Luo Dongmei, 35, was asleep when the landslide hit, however survived and was transferred to a faculty constructing by native authorities.
“I used to be sleeping, however my brother knocked on the door and woke me up. They mentioned there was a crash and the mattress was shaking, in order that they rushed upstairs and woke us up,” Luo mentioned.
Luo, her husband and three kids, together with a number of different residents, have been supplied with meals on the faculty, however are nonetheless ready for blankets and different safety from the chilly climate, she mentioned.
Luo mentioned she was unable to contact her sister and aunt, who lived nearer to the landslide web site. “All I can do is wait,” he mentioned.
Final week, rescuers evacuated vacationers from a distant ski space in northwest China the place dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snow trapped greater than 1,000 individuals for every week. Avalanches blocked roads, stranding vacationers and residents in a village in Altay Prefecture within the Xinjiang area, close to China's border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Landslides, typically attributable to rain or unsafe building work, usually are not unusual in China. At the very least 70 individuals had been killed in landslides final yr, together with greater than 50 in an open-pit mine in China's Interior Mongolia area.
In all, pure disasters in China left 691 individuals useless and lacking final yr, inflicting direct financial losses of about 345 billion yuan ($48 billion, in accordance with the Nationwide Fee for Catastrophe Discount and the Ministry of Administration In the meantime, the Ministry of Pure Sources has enacted emergency response measures for geological disasters and despatched a workforce of specialists to the positioning.
Emergency Administration Minister Wang Xiangxi traveled to the landslide web site to guide rescue operations, in accordance with a ministry assertion.
The earthquake in Yunnan additionally got here simply over a month after China's strongest earthquake in years struck the northwest in a distant area between Gansu and Qinghai province. At the very least 149 individuals had been killed within the 6.2-magnitude temblor that struck on December 18, decreasing homes to rubble and inflicting heavy mudslides that flooded two villages in Qinghai province.
Practically 1,000 individuals had been injured and greater than 14,000 properties had been destroyed in what was China's deadliest earthquake in 9 years.
