Landslide deaths prompt call for hazards scrutiny

The country's top emergency management apparatus has demanded local authorities watch areas with geological hazards around the clock after 15 people were confirmed dead in a landslide in Guizhou province on Tuesday.

Personnel should be organized to comb through areas that will be potentially stricken by mountain torrents, landslides and mudslides to identify hazards, and special attention should be paid to residential areas in mountainous areas, tourist attractions, construction sites and mines, the Ministry of Emergency Management said in a media release late on Wednesday night.

"People should be dispatched to closely watch 24 hours a day after identifying hazards so that problems could be reported and addressed in a timely manner," it said.

The landslide hit Pingdi village, Shuicheng county, at around 9:20 pm on Tuesday, ripping through a hillside area with 27 houses and swallowing 21 of them. The area, now covered by about 2 million cubic meters of soil, has 23 households with 77 residents. Twenty-one of them were not at home when the tragedy happened.

Rescuers managed to pull 26 people from the site－15 of whom were dead－and 30 remain missing. They resorted to excavators to unearth the buried buildings to look for survivors. Their efforts, however, were hindered by frequent mudslides on Thursday, as online video shows.

"After a new landslide in the morning, debris flows occurred every few minutes," an unnamed rescuer was quoted as saying by news website thecover.cn.

The rescuer also said rescue work in the lowest part of the landslide-stricken area was almost stagnant because of the frequent debris flows. The flows brought a lot of soil down, creating a huge pile. Furthermore, the area excavators could work on is very limited because soil in some places is too soft for their machines.

The ministry also asked relevant government bodies to intensify monitoring and ratchet up efforts to post alerts on sudden rainstorms as well as floods and other geological disasters. Local authorities should draft detailed evacuation plans for residents living in areas prone to such disasters, it said.

The ministry, together with the Ministry of Finance, has distributed 30 million yuan ($4.36 million) in disaster relief funding to Guizhou to cope with the aftermath of the disaster.