Sleepless night for SE China landslide rescue mission

Rescuers search for signs of life at the landslide site in Taining County, southeast China's Fujian Province, May 8, 2016. The number of people missing from a landslide that hit Taining on Sunday has risen to 41, according to a press conference held Sunday night. [Photo/Xinhua]

FUZHOU - Overnight, excavators shoved away boulders while rescuers groped through the mud and rocks searching for 41 missing people following a landslide in southeast China's Fujian Province.

The disaster, which occurred at about 5 a.m. Sunday in the mountainous county of Taining, unleashed about 100,000 cubic meters of mud and rocks downhill, burying a temporary shed at a hydropower station construction site and damaging its offices.

Under the searchlights, hundreds of rescuers, aided by sniffer dogs and life detecting equipment, searched every inch along a 10-meter-high slope of a landslide pileup.

Li Dajiang, a forklift operator with Sinohydro Bureau 12 Co. Ltd., said he could not sleep or take a break because he hadn't found any more survivors during the night after saving two injured people from the debris on Sunday.

A total of 13 injured people rescued from the accident site are being treated at a local hospital, and all are in stable condition.

The Sinohydro Bureau 12 Co. Ltd. is responsible for building an expansion of the Chitan hydropower station, along with the Sinohydro Bureau 16 Co., Ltd. Both companies have been involved in the rescue work.

About one kilometer away, Jiang Xiulan's grain and oil shop stayed open all night. Villagers gathered there to find out information about the rescue.

Some villagers noted that most of those buried were construction workers in their 30s or 40s, who ought to be the breadwinners of their families. How would their families live if they lost their lives, they asked.

"My niece was helping in the kitchen at the construction site when the accident happened. She must have been among the missing in the landslide. Hope for her survival is dim," said Jiang, the shop owner.

Despite her sorrow, she was determined to keep herself busy and stayed all night to provide food such as noodles and eggs for rescuers.

"I just want them to have something hot to eat," she said.

More and more rescuers passed through her shop over the night. They endured intermittent rain showers and multiple cave-ins along roads in order to join the rescue.

Wang Gang, captain of the Xiamen Shuguang Rescue Team, said the team had just returned from a quake relief mission in Ecuador.

"We've got equipment and skills for search and rescue. We hope our work can give people more hope for survival miracles," he said.

Closely monitoring the Chitan reservoir's water retention capacity,Huang Qiyu, commander of the Fujian Provincial Headquarters of Flood Control and Drought Relief, said they have postponed a plan to increase the flood discharge of the reservoir, which is under increasing pressure from flooding upstream.

"We are trying our best to save more time for the rescue," he said, adding that accelerating flood discharge would post flood threats to the rescue site.

He said under the current weather conditions, the province is prone to flooding and ensuing geological disasters.

"More tests might be ahead," said his assistant Zheng Guo'en.