Rescuers search for 90 missing after deadly mudslides
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Rescuers are expecting the death toll to rise as they search for 90 people still missing a day after mudslides hit a remote mountain town in southwest China's Yunnan Province, killing at least two.
Most of the missing people are employees of the Yujin Iron Mine and villagers in the Puladi Township, in the Drung-Nu Autonomous County of Gongshan, where the mudslides struck at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.
"It was raining hard on Tuesday night, but I didn't care because I'm accustomed to that," said Li Xiuhua, who had eight relatives among the missing in the hardest-hit Litoudi Village.
Li survived because she does not live in the low-lying valley areas, but high in the mountains.
"I was woken up suddenly late in the night by cries from my fellow villagers: 'Run! Run! Run! Here comes a mudslide! Run to the higher place'," she recalled.
"I dressed myself immediately and ran out of my house. I saw the village in the valley had disappeared and houses buried in mud and rock. There were loud cries everywhere and some villagers were crazily digging the mud to find their relatives.
"If it had been daytime, more people could have been saved. But my mother, my elder sister and her husband, my nieces.... Eight people, I lost all of them," Li said.
More than 1,000 residents have been evacuated, and some 30 injured were being treated in the hospital, said He Zhengjiang, a publicity official in Gongshan.
"The mudslides spread across an area of about 130 mu (8.7 hectares), and left some 300,000 cubic meters of mud and rock," he said.
At least 10 trucks carrying iron ore and 21 houses were buried. Roads were damaged, and power supplies and telecommunications were disrupted.
The mudslides also destroyed a bridge and blocked parts of the Nujiang River flowing through the mountains, lifting the water level in the upper reaches by up to 6 meters.
The central and local authorities have allocated emergency funds and sent relief teams, tents, quilts, overcoats, clothes and rice to the area.
More than 1,100 people, including police officers, fire-fighters and border troops, have been mobilized for the rescue and search operation in the sparsely-populated area high in the mountains bordering Myanmar.
Days of torrential rain triggered the mudslides, local officials said.
On June 26 in Puladi, a mudslide killed 11 people at the construction site of a hydropower station.
Torrential rains have wreaked havoc across China this summer, incurring the worst flooding and landslides in decades.
Massive mudslides on Aug. 8 in Zhouqu County, in northwestern Gansu Province, have left 1,287 people dead and 457 missing.
