Chinese rescuers scoured a remote valley in the nation’s southwest for survivors today, after a landslide decimated a village, killing at least one person and leaving 90 missing.
The landslide in Puladi, a settlement in Yunnan province, was the latest of a succession of such disasters to have battered China this summer, when torrential downpours have unleashed floods and dislodged hillsides on to towns and villages.
In the worst landslide, at least 1,287 people died in Zhouqu in northwest province of Gansu after rains. More than 450 residents remain missing, probably dead. Storms in neighboring Longnan and in Sichuan province to the south killed dozens more.
Pictures from Puladi showed a swathe of the green valley covered in mud, with rescuers laying down planks across the destruction to reach a stricken village with about 100 residents, some of them workers at a small iron ore mine.
“We heard a massive noise and knew it was a mudslide,” one villager, Yu Lichun, told the China News Service. “We ran and there wasn’t even time to get dressed, and we ran shouting and screaming.”
At least one resident died, the Xinhua news agency said. The China News Service, another state-run agency, said two were confirmed dead. At least 10 mine trucks and 21 houses were buried, Zhong Zhifang, an official helping rescue efforts, told Xinhua.
Puladi lies in the Nu River valley, a mountainous corner near the Chinese border with Myanmar. The area is sparsely settled.
The remote, muddy conditions were likely to make it difficult for rescuers to find the 90 or more people who were missing, at least some of whom may have been able to flee the avalanche of mud and rocks some 300m across that hit early yesterday.
More rain was likely to hit the area in coming days, weather reports said.
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