Dramatic moments of fatal Gansu landslide

"It all came down at once," she said. "It was so fast."

As she fled, something struck her from behind, knocking her to the ground. She scrambled back to her feet and managed to run a few more steps before falling again.

"I don't even know what hit me," she said. "I just kept running."

When she finally looked back, the people who had been standing with her only moments earlier were gone.

"I thought they would all make it out," she said quietly. "I never imagined…"

Despite suffering injuries to her leg and arm, Gou's first instinct was to call for help. The surviving workers quickly contacted emergency services as they waited helplessly outside the disaster zone.

Even in the hospital, Gou struggled less with her own injuries than with the loss suffered by her village.

"We all left home happy that morning," she said. "None of us imagined that less than half an hour later, everything would change."

She said she had seen small landslides before, but nothing remotely like this.

"It happened in an instant," she said. "It was too sudden, too fast. People simply didn't have time to react."

Now recovering in hospital, Gou said she considers herself fortunate to have survived, but the grief is overwhelming.

"We were lucky," she said. "But so many people behind us never made it out."