We turn now to hte aftermath of Sunday's deadly landslide in Taining County, in China's eastern province of Fujian. The search continues for one person still missing. The landslide was triggered by days of heavy rain, and it hit a hydro-power station which was under construction. 35 bodies have been recovered. Over a dozen people were rescued.
Nightmare struck the workers in their sleep. Over 30 workers on the construction site of the hydropower station of Taining county, Fujian Province were reported missing. Bridges down. Roads caved-in. Rescue teams are heading to the site on foot.
14 survivors were hospitalized after receiving surgery and other medical treatment. But no more survivors were sent here. Large-scale machines arrived, together with nearly 200 armed police soldiers, vowed to find the missing. Life signals were detected.
"The soldiers are working on the location where life signal was detected. The detection machine is very sensitive to possible living signals. We followed one signal but just recovered two bodies," General Fu Ling with People's Armed Police said.
Right now.. it’s 2:30 in the morning, almost 22 hours after the landslide hit the construction site of the hydro-electric power station. As we can see, over 100,000 cubic meters of rocks and mud had rushed downhill.
But the heavy rainfall overnight suspended the rescue work. When the excavators got back to work, more bodies were recovered from the rubble.
"I’d detected the first life signal. There were 3 locations of life signals, one up on the hill, where we found 4 bodies. One is down at the river bank, the life signal lasted for hours and then vanished around 4 in the morning.Today we have recovered 18 bodies so far," Wang Yonggang with People's Armed Police said.
Minor dangers may burst out anytime during the search for the missing.
"The hydropower station reported 9 hydrogen tanks buried under the rocks and mud. They might explode along with our exploration. We two are going in to secure the safety of the remaining tanks…" Li Qing, rescuer with Fire Department said.
"The construction site where 33 victims were found has been skimmed to the bottom. We are searching the surrounding area of 100 meters long and 50 meters wide for other missing people. Also, our main task now is to move away the rocks and mud on site and clear the remaining debris," General Fu said.
As of 1.30 in the afternoon May the 10th, 57 hours after the landslide hit the hydropower station construction site, the rescue team has found 35 bodies, and 1 person is still missing. The rescue teams are speeding up the operation to clear the debris, and are gradually withdrawing from the site.
The rain is pouring down again. 200 more hilly landslide were reported in adjacent counties and the flood season is about to come. Other than the quick response and all-out efforts put in rescuing the victims, full alert of possible and potential disasters and pre-hand preparations are also needed to decrease the casualty to the lowest level.
