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June 26, 2017

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Hope fades for 93 buried in landslide

RESCUERS were digging through earth and rocks yesterday in a search for more than 90 people still missing a day after their village in southwest China vanished under a huge landslide.

At least 10 people have been confirmed dead after the avalanche of rocks buried 62 homes in Xinmo, a once-picturesque mountain village nestled by a river in Sichuan Province, the local government said.

The Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba revised the number of confirmed dead down from 15 to 10. The number of people who remained unaccounted for was also lowered from 118 to 93 after the prefecture said some of those earlier reported missing had been traced.

Names and identification numbers were published on the prefecture’s website yesterday, and the public have been asked to provide clues which may lead to their whereabouts.

The area borders the Minjiang River, a major tributary of the Yangtze in its upper stream.

Only three survivors — a couple and their 1-month-old baby — have been found since heavy rain brought down a side of the mountain early on Saturday.

They were rescued five hours after the landslide struck. Qiao Dashuai, 26, told China Central Television that he and his wife awoke to cries from their son around 5:30am.

“Just after we changed the baby’s diaper, we heard a big bang outside and the lights went out,” Qiao said. “We felt that something bad was happening and immediately rushed to the door, but the door was blocked by mud and rocks.”

Qiao said his family was swept away by water as part of a mountain collapsed. He said they struggled against the water until they came across medical workers who took them to a hospital. Their 2-year-old daughter and three other relatives are among the missing, Sichuan’s official news outlet said.

Qiao and his wife were said to be in a stable condition yesterday and their baby was in an intensive care unit with pneumonia induced by mud inhalation.

Xinhua news agency cited geological experts at the site as saying the chance of finding any survivors “was really slim.”

Relatives of the missing were also losing hope.

Huo Chunlai, wearing a lace-brimmed sunhat, returned from the affected site on foot. Her cousin and two aunts lived in Xinmo. She said locals had asked rescuers to stop the search. “There’s no hope they’re alive,” Huo said.

“The house is in one place here but the people who were inside were dragged way out over there. They’re not in the same place any more. The landslide washed away the people all over the place. You simply can’t find them any more.”

You Sunfang and her husband rode five hours on a motorbike from another village to get news about her uncle.

“If he had lived on the edges maybe there would have been hope. But he lived right in the middle of the slope where the landslide came down,” she said, wiping away tears.

At least half a dozen excavators were removing debris yesterday as rescuers in orange jumpsuits searched between rocks.

Some 3,000 workers with life-detection equipment and sniffer dogs were taking part, Xinhua said.

In Diexi, a hamlet overlooking Xinmo, farmer Yang Cangxin said she knew everyone in the neighboring village.

“It’s so hard to imagine something like that happening when you’re sleeping quietly and peacefully in your own bed. It’s just awful. They had no idea what was coming.”

“WE were all crying, heartbroken,” she said.

Xinmo residents were farmers who grew corn, peppercorn and potatoes, she said, though some had opened guest houses for tourists.

Xu Zhiwen, the prefecture’s deputy governor, said 142 tourists had been visiting the village on Friday but they weren’t among the people buried.

Some 30 people from another village brought wheelbarrows packed with bottled water, tubs of food and bags of meat down the hill for survivors.

A white dog apparently looking for its owner was found in the rubble.

A rescuer was seen on English-language channel CGTN trying to coax the canine from the mound of rocks and earth in Xinmo, but it refused to leave.

“Anyone here? Little doggie, where is your owner?” a rescuer could be heard saying off camera.

“Dog waiting for its owner refuses to leave rubble, capturing the hearts of a nation after #Sichuan #landslide,” CGTN said on its Twitter account.

Hundreds of people on Weibo expressed concern for the dog, with at least one person offering to adopt it.

The dog’s appearance was a bright spot in the increasingly bleak search for the missing.

Landslides are a frequent danger in rural and mountainous parts of China, particularly in heavy rain.

At least 12 people were killed in January when a landslide crushed a hotel in the central province of Hubei.

In 1933, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake left many villages near Diexi submerged.

In 1976, two strong earthquakes struck about 100 kilometers from the town which is about 150 kilometers from the epicenter of an 8.0-magnitude earthquake in 2008, which left over 80,000 people dead or missing.




 

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