BEIJING – A landslide in southwestern China’s mountainous Yunnan province in the early hours of Monday morning buried 47 people, killed at least two and forced 200 more to evacuate amid subzero temperatures and snowfall.
The disaster occurred just before 6 a.m. local time (5 p.m. ET on Sunday) in Liangshui village in northeastern Yunnan province. Rescue operations are underway to find the victims buried in 18 separate houses, the Zhenxiong County Public Information Bureau said.
Two bodies were pulled from the rubble, state broadcaster CCTV said. The cause of the landslide was not immediately known as survivors and rescuers battled snow and subzero temperatures expected to persist for at least the next three days.
Luo Dongmei, 35, was asleep when the landslide occurred, but she survived and was moved to a school building by local authorities.
“I was asleep, but my brother knocked on the door and woke me up. There was a landslide and the bed was shaking, so he rushed upstairs and woke us up.” Luo said.
Luo, her husband, their three children and many other residents have been provided with food at the school, but she said they are still waiting for blankets and other protection from the cold.
Luo said she was unable to contact her sister and aunt, who lived near the landslide site. “All I can do is wait,” she said.
Last week, rescue teams evacuated tourists from a remote ski resort in northwest China. Dozens of avalanches caused by heavy snow have trapped more than 1,000 people for a week. An avalanche closed roads and stranded tourists and residents in a village in Altai County, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, near China’s borders with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.
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-pit mine in China’s Inner Mongolia region.
Natural disasters in China last year caused a total of 691 deaths or missing people and direct economic losses of about 345 billion yuan ($48 billion), according to the National Disaster Management Committee and the Ministry of Emergency Management.
State Emergency Management Minister Wang Xiangxi visited the landslide site to guide rescue operations, the ministry said in a statement.
The landslides in Yunnan province also come just over a month after China’s most powerful earthquake in years struck a remote region between Gansu and Qinghai provinces in northwestern China. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake on Dec. 18 killed at least 149 people, reduced homes to rubble and triggered massive landslides that flooded two villages in Qinghai province.
The quake, China’s deadliest earthquake in nine years, injured nearly 1,000 people and destroyed more than 14,000 homes.