More than 700 people are now known to have died in a massive landslide in north-west China – making it one of the deadliest incidents so far in the country’s worst flooding in a decade.
Rescuers digging by hand through mud found a 52-year old man who had been trapped for more than 50 hours inside a leveled apartment building in the remote town of Zhouqu, where local officials said more than 1,000 other people were still missing. Rescuers with sniffer dogs discovered the man, Liu Ma Shindan, who was in weak condition but breathing normally.
The landslides hit a remote Gansu province town Sunday, with a slew of mud and rocks engulfing swathes of the mountainside community in the deadliest incident so far in the country’s worst flooding in a decade.
Engineers were battling Tuesday to drain an unstable lake created by the country’s deadliest landslide in a decade, threatening new misery for the devastated northwestern region if it bursts its banks.
With Tropical Storm Dianmu heading for northern China — and expected to bring strong rains — the top priority was to keep the brimming lake from overflowing or causing a catastrophic collapse of the temporary dam.
Water levels behind the barrier fell slightly after controlled explosions created a channel to funnel some off.
