At least 91 people were missing
after a huge mound of mud and construction waste collapsed at a business park
in southern China and buried 33 buildings in the country's latest industrial
disaster.
Premier Li Keqiang ordered an
official investigation into Sunday's landslide in the southern boomtown of
Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, which comes four months after
huge chemical blasts at the northern port of Tianjin killed more than 160
people.
The mud and waste smashed into
multi-storey buildings at the Hengtaiyu industrial park in the city's
northwestern Guangming New District, toppling them in collisions that sent
rivers of earth skyward.
"The area affected equals 14
soccer pitches - so that gives you an idea of how big this thing was," Al
Jazeera's Adrian Brown reported.
"Most of [the missing] are
migrant workers," he said, adding that it is usually migrant workers who
are most badly affected by such disasters in China.
Speaking to the official Xinhua news
agency, a local worker said: "I saw red earth and mud running towards the
company building."
|
I saw red earth and mud running
towards the company building. It's been hours after he was buried, and
we are quite worried
|
One woman told the Shenzhen Evening
News newspaper on Sunday that she saw her father buried by earth in his truck.
"It's been hours after he was
buried, and we are quite worried," she said.
Xinhua said 14 people had been
rescued and more than 900 people had been evacuated from the site by Sunday
evening.
Rescue operations were slowed by
numerous obstacles, including continued rain, low visibility overnight, and
mud, Ao Zhuoqian, a member of the Shenzhen fire brigade involved in on-site
rescue, told Xinhua.
State television showed scenes of
devastation, with crumpled buildings sticking up from heaps of brown mud which
stretched out across the edge of the industrial park. The mud had covered an
area of more than 60,000 square metres (72,000 sq yards) and was six metres
deep in parts, state media said.
More than 2,000 rescuers - with
sniffer dogs and drones - were sifting through rubble looking for survivors
after the landslide left everything covered in mud, leaving only a surface of
yellow sand visible, Xinhua said.
The accumulation of a large amount
of construction waste meant that mud was stacked too steep, "causing
instability and collapse, resulting in the collapse of buildings", the
ministry of land resources said in a statement, referencing an investigation
from provincial authorities.
A nearby section of China's major
West-East natural gas pipeline also exploded, state television said, though it
was not clear if this had any impact on the landslide.
Xinhua said the pipeline was owned
by PetroChina, China's top oil and gas producer, that the 400-metre-long
ruptured pipe "has been emptied" and a temporary pipe will be built.
Contacted by Reuters news agency,
the company said it was looking into what had happened.
Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered
provincial authorities to do everything possible to minimise casualties, treat
the injured and comfort family members, Xinhua said.
The frequency of industrial accidents
in China has raised questions about safety standards following three decades of
breakneck economic growth.
In one of China's worst landslides
in living memory, more than 1,500 people died in 2010 when a barrage of mud
slid down a mountainside into a town in the northwestern province of Gansu
following torrential rain.
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