BEIJING, July 20 — Rescue teams in southwestern China used explosives to blast through heavy boulders hampering efforts to reach 34 people reported missing for three days after a landslide during torrential rain in an area famed for natural beauty.
China is one of the most landslide-prone countries in the world, and eight people died in Friday's (July 17) disaster in the county of Penghui, some 270km from the high-rise urban centre of the sprawling municipality of Chongqing.
Today's blasting operation shattered a massive boulder in television images shown by state broadcaster CCTV, which added that the mission had entered a "deep rescue phase" but provided no immediate details.
The effort followed President Xi Jinping's call for scientific search-and-rescue operations for the missing, as well as a swift investigation into the cause of the landslide.
Authorities evacuated more than 1,100 people after a landslide in the county home to about 500,000 people, where many communities cling to steep hillsides hugging the Wujian River.
In the aftermath, video clips and photographs showed a portion of the collapsed mountainside cascading into the river, cutting off the main street of the narrow, hillside township.
On Saturday (July 18), official news agency Xinhua reported that the authorities have sent teams to investigate hidden geological dangers and monitor the risk of secondary disasters.
With heavy to torrential rain forecast through Monday across multiple provinces, authorities have called for stronger safeguards in high-risk areas made vulnerable by abundant groundwater and intensive construction.
CCTV reported today that eight small- and medium-sized rivers in Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Anhui, and Shanghai are currently at or above flood warning levels.
Intense summer rainfall, coupled with rapid urbanisation and construction, as well as frequent tectonic activity, are key contributing factors to disasters in China, where mountains, hills, and plateaus make up two-thirds of the landmass.
Over the past decade, a total of about 294 people have been killed nationwide in at least five major, deadly landslides.
The worst such incident killed more than 70 after the December 2015 collapse of a massive pile of construction debris at an industrial park in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen.
