According to a preliminary estimate, at least 47 people were buried in a landslide in southwest China's Yunnan province on Monday, January 22, state media said. The tragedy occurred at 5:51 a.m. (9:51 p.m. Paris time) in Liangshui village in Zhenxiong Canton and “forty-seven people from eighteen households were buried,” he said. The New China announced news agency.
“More than two hundred residents were urgently evacuated, ten excavators, thirty-three fire engines and more than two hundred rescuers were mobilized for search operations,” public television CCTV said.
A video released by New China shows about 10 firefighters in orange suits and helmets advancing on concrete blocks and other rubble. Images posted on Chinese social network Douyin also show a snow-covered mountain village with houses partially buried by an apparent landslide.
A region prone to landslides
Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered aid workers to “do everything possible to limit the number of casualties,” CCTV reported. “It is appropriate to carry out the work to support the families of the victims and resettle those affected,” he stressed.
The scene of the tragedy is about 1,600 kilometers as the crow flies southwest of Shanghai and 350 kilometers northeast of the provincial capital Kunming. Landslides occur regularly in the mountainous southwest of China, especially after rainfall. No reason has yet been given for Monday's tragedy.
In September 2023, storms in the Guangxi region (south) caused a landslide in a mountainous area, killing at least seven people, according to the local press. About twenty people died in August in a landslide caused by a flash flood in a village near the northern city of Xi'an. In June, nineteen people died in a landslide in the also isolated and mountainous province of Sichuan (southwest).
Also read | China: At least 21 dead in landslide