Landslide kills 14 in bad-luck Yunnan
( 2001-07-10 23:59 ) (1 )

Fourteen people died and more than 20 people were injured in a landslide on Monday in Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Seven people remained missing Tuesday.

Also in Yunnan, an earthquake of 5.3 on the Richter scale occurred in the Chuxiong region west of Kunming. No details were available Tuesday on injuries or damages.

The deadly landslide buried a two-storey residential building and the houses of five farmers in a mining area.

Continuous rain for several days is to blame for the landslide, according to published reports Tuesday.

The injured people were hospitalized and rescue work is going smoothly, officials said.

A landslide in the same area in the mid-1980s killed 100 people, according to reports.

This week's landslide and earthquake are just more natural calamities for a province haunted by them all summer.

Typhoons Durian and Utor have brought torrential rains to several counties across the province. Fifteen died last week in torrential flooding and 10 remain missing in Jinping Miao Autonomous County.

Six primary and middle schools in the county were seriously damaged.

In Xinping, farms were flooded, houses collapsed and roads were blocked, racking up losses of nearly 100 million yuan (US$12 million).

In Guangnan, consecutive torrential rain with rainfall of more than 100 millimetres hit most of the townships and caused a 100 million yuan (US$12 million) in losses, too.

Other disasters in Yunnan include a whirlwind of force 7 that swept through the Nanshi District of Jinghong in Xishuangbanna on July 2 with a speed of up to 18 metres per hour, damaging houses and causing a loss of more than 6 million yuan (US$725,000).

(China Daily by Wu Jiachun)