Rescue efforts ongoing following landslide

Rescue teams are working around the clock to pull people from debris after a landslide occurred at around 9 am on Friday in Pengshui Miao and Tujia autonomous county, Southwest China's Chongqing.

The landslide buried several residential buildings along the banks of the Wujiang River.

As of 6:30 pm on Friday, rescuers had extricated 18 trapped victims from the rubble. Eight of them passed away despite emergency medical intervention, whereas the other 10 were sent to hospital with no life-threatening conditions for the time being. Thirty-four people are still listed as missing.

Dai Qianhua, a local resident, was at home in the morning when he heard a deafening bang and felt the ground shaking. At first he thought it was an earthquake, until the news reported it was a landslide.

A woman surnamed Li, a local online car-hailing driver, said the sound was so loud she was sure that almost everyone in the county town could hear it. She added that the site is on the outskirts of Pengshui county town, where shops were located on the ground floor.

One of the buried shops sold fireworks and firecrackers, which is thought to explain the flames that could be seen in the morning. At around 6 pm on Friday, smoke could still be seen rising from the rubble.

According to Xinhua News Agency, more than 1,100 residents around the collapse site have been evacuated. Water, electricity and gas supplies have been cut off within a one-kilometer radius of the accident area to facilitate hazard inspections. More than 800 rescuers are working on-site.

Zhang Zhongju, 55, lives right next to the collapse site. She was wandering on the street when a community worker told her she could not return home. She is now staying at a nearby hotel.

"I've been told two beams in my house have broken, making it uninhabitable. I live here alone; the rest of my family works elsewhere. As long as everyone is safe, that's the main thing," she said, adding that she has no idea what the future holds for her house.

Following the incident, rescue teams have been working tirelessly at the scene, with efforts still ongoing.

Jiang Guoyu, director of the rescue coordination department of the Chongqing natural disaster engineering rescue team of the Ministry of Emergency Management, said 100 rescue personnel, including engineering, geological and rescue teams, along with 50 sets of specialized equipment for engineering rescue, detection and search, have arrived at the site to carry out disaster assessment, on-site surveys and search for survivors.