In China, a landslide buried 47 people

Photo: CCTV via Associated Press Rescuers search through rubble following a landslide in Liangshui village, Yunnan province.

Associated Press in Beijing

January 22, 2024

• Asia

A landslide in southwest China's mountainous Yunnan province buried 47 people early Monday and forced the evacuation of 200 others.

Disaster struck shortly before 6 a.m. in Liangshui Village, under Tangfang Town, Zhenxiong County. The county publicity department said rescue efforts were underway to find the victims buried in 18 different homes.

No deaths or injuries were immediately reported. The cause of the landslide was not immediately known, although photos from the scene appeared to show snow on the ground.

Luo Dongmei, 35, was sleeping when the landslide occurred, but she survived and was transferred to a school by local authorities.

“I was sleeping, but my brother knocked on the door and woke me up. They said there was a landslide and the bed was shaking, so they rushed upstairs and woke us up,” Ms. Luo said.

Ms. Luo, her husband and their three children, along with many other residents, have received food at the school, but are still waiting for blankets and other protection against the cold, a- she indicated.

Ms. Luo said she had been unable to contact her sister and aunt, who lived closer to the landslide site. “The only thing I can do is wait,” she said.

Rescuers last week evacuated tourists from a remote ski resort in northwest China, where dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snow trapped more than 1,000 people for a week. The avalanches blocked roads, stranding tourists and residents in a village in Altay Prefecture in the Xinjiang region, near China's border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.< /p>

Landslides, often caused by rain or dangerous construction work, are not uncommon in China. At least 70 people were killed in landslides last year, including more than 50 at an open-cast mine in the Inner Mongolia region. In 2021, 14 workers were killed when a tunnel under construction was flooded.

The landslide occurred just over a month after China's most powerful earthquake in years, which struck the northwest of an isolated region between Gansu and Qinghai province. At least 149 people were killed in the 6.2 magnitude quake that struck on December 18, reducing homes to rubble and triggering massive mudslides that flooded two villages in Qinghai province.

Nearly 1,000 people were injured and more than 14,000 homes were destroyed in China's deadliest earthquake in nine years.