Chinese state media said 31 people were confirmed dead and several others were missing after a landslide occurred in a remote mountainous area in southwestern Yunnan province.
BEIJING — Thirty-one people were confirmed dead and several others missing on Tuesday after a landslide in a remote mountainous region of southwestern China’s Yunnan province, Chinese state media reported.
The disaster occurred just before 6 a.m. Monday in Liangshui village in northeastern Yunnan province.
Authorities announced early Tuesday that a total of 44 people were found missing or dead.
Search and rescue operations resumed after being suspended earlier in the day due to another landslide warning.
More than 1,000 rescue workers worked in sub-zero temperatures with the help of excavators, drones and rescue dogs, the Ministry of Emergency Management said. The two survivors were found on Monday and are recovering at a local hospital.
The landslide was caused by the collapse of an area on a steep cliff, state news agency Xinhua said, citing preliminary investigations by local experts.The collapsed mass was about 100 meters (330 feet) wide and about 60 meters high. (200 feet). It averages 6 meters (20 ft) thick. It did not elaborate on the cause of the initial collapse.
Aerial photos posted by Xinhua News Agency showed water flowing down the side of a terraced mountain onto houses in several villages. More than 900 villagers were relocated.
Zhenxiong County is located approximately 2,250 kilometers (1,400 miles) southwest of Beijing and reaches an altitude of 2,400 meters (7,900 feet).
Rescuers battled snow, icy roads and sub-zero temperatures expected to persist for at least the next three days.
Heavy snow has fallen in many parts of China, disrupting transportation and putting lives at risk.
Last week, rescue teams evacuated tourists from a remote ski resort in northwest China. More than 1,000 people were trapped at the ski resort for a week after dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snowfall. 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 open-pit mines in the 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. Resources took emergency response measures to the geological disaster and dispatched a work team of experts to the site.
Also on Tuesday, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the sparsely populated region of western China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, causing severe damage but injuring only six people in freezing temperatures, authorities said. The tremors were felt hundreds of kilometers away. The quake was the latest in a series of seismic events and natural disasters to hit the country’s western region.
Just last month, China’s deadliest earthquake in years struck a remote region between Gansu and Qinghai provinces in northwestern China. The 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. Nearly 1,000 people were injured and more than 14,000 homes were destroyed.