LIANGSHUI, CHINA – The catastrophic landslide in southwestern China’s Liangshui village has claimed 25 lives as of Tuesday, with search and rescue operations in full force. Over 1,000 first responders are painstakingly sifting through the wreckage in a race against time to locate survivors.
The rescue efforts are fraught with challenges, including unstable soil conditions, freezing temperatures, and falling snow. The precarious state of the soil has rendered large-scale mechanical operations almost impossible, making the on-site rescue efforts incredibly difficult.
The landslide, which occurred early Monday, has left a tragic toll. In addition to the confirmed fatalities, 19 individuals remain unaccounted for, while three have been rescued. The rescue operations had to be briefly suspended due to an alert for another potential landslide, but were resumed on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Emergency Management reports that more than 1,000 rescuers are involved in the operation. Two of the survivors rescued on Monday are currently recuperating in a local hospital.
Preliminary investigations by local experts, as reported by the state news agency Xinhua, suggest that the landslide was triggered by the collapse of a steep clifftop area. The collapsed mass is estimated to be around 330 feet wide and 200 feet high, with an average thickness of about 20 feet. The cause of the initial collapse remains unclear.
Images from the scene show first responders carrying away a survivor on a stretcher, and excavators digging through the debris. In a separate incident in China’s western Xinjiang region on Tuesday, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake destroyed several homes, injuring six people.