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ZHOUQU, Gansu, – The death toll from a massive rain-triggered mudslide in Zhouqu County in northwest China’s Gansu Province has risen to 702, with 1,042 others still missing, local civil affairs authorities said Tuesday afternoon.

Some 1,243 people have been rescued, Tian Baozhong, head of the provincial civil affairs department, told a news conference.

Of them, 58 who were seriously injured had been hospitalized, Ma Chengyang, deputy director of the provincial publicity department, told another press briefing Tuesday night.

Torrential rain on Saturday night prompted an avalanche of sludge and debris to crash down on the county seat of Zhouqu early Sunday morning, ripping many houses off their foundations and tearing multi-story apartment buildings in half.

The mud-rock flow has leveled an area of about 5 km long, 300 meters wide and 5 meters deep in the county seat with more than 2 million cubic meters of mud and rocks, severely damaging power, telecommunication and water supply facilities.

About 45,000 residents have been evacuated, as mudslides have destroyed more than 300 homes and damaged another 700. Moreover, 3,000 homes have been flooded.

More than 4,400 tents have reached Zhouqu but most of them have not yet been set up due to a lack of open space, Tian said.

About 16,000 more tents from the Ministry of Civil Affairs are still in Lanzhou, the provincial capital, Tian said.

The mountainous terrain has hampered disaster relief operations. Rescuers could only set up 100 tents in two settlement centers on the playgrounds of two middle schools.

“We have adequate tents, but insufficient space to pitch them,” said Zhang Hongdong, a worker with the county’s Red Cross Society.

Most people affected by the disaster sought shelter with their relatives and friends in nearby regions, Zhang added.

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Continue reading »]]> Chinese rescue workers searched for dozens of people believed to be trapped by a massive landslide in the southwest city of Chongqing on Saturday, a state-run news agency reported.

Rescuers said about 80 people were buried in debris from the landslide and have almost no chance of survival, Xinhua reported. But rescuers hope to save 27 miners trapped under a mine in the area, the agency reported.

Rescuers pulled out seven injured people on Friday, including four who were seriously hurt.

The accident happened about 3 p.m. Friday at an iron ore mining area in Jiwei Mountain.

A government spokesman said the landslide destroyed 12 rural houses and buried a mining area.

The landslide cut off power and communications in many parts of the town, but 500 rescuers were still searching the area, Xinhua reported.

Massive landslide buries dozens in China

Continue reading »]]> PORT MORESEBY – Three bodies have been recovered and 16 people are missing, feared dead, after a massive landslide wiped out a remote Papua New Guinea village.

Villagers had to walk three hours to alert authorities in Morobe Province, on PNG’s northwest coast, after days of continual heavy rains caused the landslide early on Monday.

Authorities and local media reported on Wednesday at least five Firangka village houses were wiped out in the Sialum District when the face of an overlooking mountain slid for more than 500m, carving up 200m at its widest.

PNG’s National newspaper reported a village headcount showed 19 people, including women and children, were missing.

“It came so suddenly there was nothing we could do,” said villager Bobby Toby, a retired teacher.

“There were no warning signs, no earthquakes, it just happened,” he said.

Deputy Provincial administrator Patilias Gamato and other local officials visited the remote site by helicopter on Tuesday.

Gamato said PNG’s National Disaster and Emergency Office would see relief supplies reach the area by Thursday.

“Morobe province has a record of disasters that occur during the wet period and everyone, especially remote areas, should be cautious,” he said.

The bodies of a woman and two men were recovered on Monday, while villagers remain optimistic survivors will be found.

Australian relief and aid services based in PNG’s capital Port Moresby are gathering information and assessing the situation.

The village is located in the Zongefifi area about 90km northeast of Lae, PNG’s second largest city, and sits on the fringes of the rugged Sarawaget Range.

16 missing after PNG landslide

Continue reading »]]> GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — The death toll from a landslide in northern Guatemala has risen to 37 after villagers discovered two more bodies.

Rescue crew chief Sergio Cabanas said Wednesday that Aquil Grande residents found the bodies after spotting buzzards flying overhead.

The discovery came after rescuers called off their search Tuesday, citing the danger of falling rock from the weakened mountain.

Mayor Leopoldo Ical says at least 100 people were in the area when the landslide buried nearly a mile (more than a kilometer) of road on Sunday.

At least 50 are still missing. Many are laborers at nearby coffee plantations who skirted roadblocks erected after slide hit the same road two weeks ago. That avalanche killed two people.

The Associated Press: Death toll from Guatemalan landslide rises to 37

Continue reading »]]> HANOI, Sept 28 (Reuters) – Flash floods and landslides have killed 50 people in Vietnam and Thailand, swept away thousands of homes and inundated farmland, official reports said on Sunday.

In Vietnam, the death toll from typhoon Hagupit, which struck the Philippines and China earlier in the week, has jumped to 32 with another five people missing.

Thousands of homes were either washed away or destroyed by heavy rains and landslides in northern Vietnam, the government’s storm and flood prevention committee said.

Hagupit, which means “lashing” in Filipino, killed at least eight people in the Philippines and three in China where it triggered a “once-in-a-century storm tide”.

Vietnamese soldiers were dispatched to evacuate thousands of people from areas vulnerable to more flash floods and landslides in the mountainous provinces of Son La, Lang Son and Bac Giang.

Heavy rains on Sunday could trigger more landslides in the mountainous north, and flooding along the Thai Binh river, the National Meteorology Centre said.

The Red River near the capital Hanoi was expected to reach dangerously high levels on Sunday, rising to 8.6 metres (28 ft), the centre said.

Vietnam’s main agriculture belt including the coffee-growing Central Highlands region and the Mekong Delta rice basket was not in the storm’s path.

In Thailand, the death toll from floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains has risen to 18, while nearly 190,000 people have been treated for water-related illnesses and injuries, the Health Ministry said.

It said there were no major outbreaks of disease since the heavy rains began more than two weeks ago, affecting some 800,000 people in the country of 63 million.

Some 500,000 acres (200,000 ha) of farmland, most of it rice paddy, has been inundated, affecting roughly 2 percent of the total paddy for the 2008-09 growing season, according the Agriculture Ministry data.

(Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam and Arada Therdthammakun; Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Reuters AlertNet – Floods, landslides kill 50 in Vietnam, Thailand

Continue reading »]]> BEIJING, China (CNN) — The death toll from a mud and rock slide that occured at an unlicensed mine last week in northern China has risen to 254 as rescue workers continue to recover more bodies, state-run media said Sunday.

More than 1,000 rescue workers have combed through 90 percent of the inundated area — digging through hundreds of thousands of tons of slush, mud and rocks around a mine in Xiangfen county, the China Daily newspaper said.

The county is located in the country’s Shanxi Province.

Crews have begun a new round of search in a 330-yard ditch filled with silt.

“This is the toughest phase of the ongoing rescue,” the newspaper quoted Lian Zhedong, chief of the rescue headquarters, as saying.

The head of the county and the Communist Party chief of Xiangfen have been suspended from duty, the newspaper said.

Earlier, authorities detained 13 people. Among them are the board chairman of the Xinta Mining Company, the mine manager, a vice manager and accountant.

The deaths occurred after torrential rain on Monday at the Tashan Mine, which operated illegally.

The amount of iron-ore waste in a holding pond exceeded the pond’s capacity, Xinhua said, and intense rain triggered a flow of mud and rocks that roared down a valley Monday to collapse a warehouse, bury homes and damage cars.

The deluge also destroyed a three-story office building and a market.

The China Daily report said the economic loss from the disaster is an estimated 9.18 million yuan ($1.34 million)

Continue reading »]]> BEIJING (AP) — Rescuers shoveled and hammered at debris Wednesday searching for survivors buried under sludge, mud and mining waste in northern China after a landslide that killed at least 128 people, but hopes of finding anybody alive were fading.

The landslide that plowed into buildings Monday in a valley in Shanxi province’s Xiangfen county also injured 35 others and trapped an unknown number of people under the rubble, local officials said.

A low-rise office building, a market and some houses were knocked down by the rapid surge of mud and mining waste, which formed a wall measuring three stories high and 660 yards (600 meters) wide, according to media reports.

State-run media had initially reported that there were hundreds of people missing, but later cited authorities as saying the figure could not be determined while an investigation was continuing.

The death toll rose to 128 Wednesday, state broadcaster China Central Television said on its evening newscast.

The official Xinhua News Agency cited local government official Lian Zhendong as saying rescuers had searched through 70% of the rubble. But local officials said Wednesday they feared the chances of survival were slim.

“There were survivors on the first day and on the second day, but from day three, it’s very likely that anyone we find in the future will be dead already,” said a woman surnamed Dong who heads the propaganda department of Xiangfen county.

Dong told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that more than 2,000 police, firefighters and villagers were mobilized in the search, but conditions were difficult.

“There is mud everywhere,” said Dong, who was speaking from the site where excavators and front loaders were lifting earth and debris. “It is very hard for the machines to drive through the mud.”

Also hampering rescue efforts were the rough terrain, poor telecommunications and heavy rainfall, which halted only on Wednesday, Dong said. Like many Chinese officials, she refused to give her full name.

The accident underscores two major public safety concerns in China: the failure to enforce protective measures in the country’s notoriously deadly mines, and the unsound state of many of its bridges, dams and other aging infrastructure.

A preliminary investigation showed that the landslide was caused by the collapse of a dam used as a retaining wall to enclose tailings from an iron mine, said Wang Dexue, deputy head of the State Administration of Work Safety.

“It is an illegal company that was using the abandoned dump to get rid of its production waste,” Wang said in an interview broadcast on state television.

Heavy rains caused the already overloaded dump to breach, Wang said.

Xinhua said the State Council, China’s Cabinet, will open an investigation into the cause of the landslide while nine people suspected of being responsible for the incident, including the owner of the mine, were detained.

Xinhua said several officials, including the local head of the work safety administration, the village Party secretary and village chief have already been sacked for negligence.

Continue reading »]]> TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian state TV says that heavy rains led to flash floods that killed at least 19 people and injured four others in southwestern Iran.

According to the TV report, the flooding hit the southwestern Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari province on Tuesday night. The waters wrecked more than 50 homes and 740 acres, or 300 hectares, of farmland.

The TV says at least 1,030 cattle perished. The floods also destroyed five fish-breeding facilities.

The report quotes local official Sattar Farhadi as saying that the towns of Kohrang and Ardal, and surrounding villages were the hardest hit, with hundreds of families left homeless.

Flash floods are rare in southwestern Iran.

Continue reading »]]> Thirty-four people have been killed after a mud and rock slide caused a warehouse in north China to collapse, China’s state-run news agency reported Tuesday.

Torrential rain caused the slide at about 8 a.m. Monday near the warehouse in China’s Shanxi Province, the Xinhua new agency reported, quoting rescue workers.

Witnesses said the flow of rocks and mud roared down a valley, the agency said.

The deluge also destroyed a three -story office building, a market and some villagers’ homes in the valley. Thirty-five people were injured, the agency reported.

More than 1,100 police, firefighters and others were part of the search effort, the agency reported.

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Continue reading »]]> MANILA, Philippines (AP) _ Two landslides triggered by heavy rains buried more than 20 houses in a remote gold-mining village in the southern Philippines, leaving at least 11 people dead and 19 others missing, officials said Monday.

Small stone houses and huts at the foot of the mountain village of Masara were destroyed Saturday by falling mud and rocks, killing six villagers and injuring 17 others. Another landslide struck the village early Sunday, killing five more people.

The landslides, which cascaded down a mountainside with frightening booms, buried about 28 houses and forced up to 5,000 people in Masara and nearby villages to run for their lives, said Mayor Voltaire Rimando.

Rimando said he declared a state of emergency in Masara, which he described as a “no man’s land” because of the danger and the devastation, to allow the rapid release of disaster relief funds from the town’s coffers.

Rimando said heavy rains made rescue work too dangerous Sunday, but rescuers resumed operations Monday. They had not yet entered many areas where victims were buried because the soil was too wet, he said.

“Hopefully the weather will cooperate,” he added.

Provincial Governor Arturo Uy said he would request more expert rescuers from the national government and private groups, and enlist the help of geologists from two leading universities in Manila.

Army and police, backed by two air force helicopters and workers from a gold-mining company, battled heavy rains and mud to search for villagers reported buried, regional police Chief Andres Caro told The Associated Press by telephone.

Among the missing were Masara village chief Juvencio Anquera, who helped in the rescue work following the first landslide. He went missing with his two children when their house was hit by the second landslide Sunday, Caro said.

The landslides occurred in Compostela Valley province, about 520 miles southeast of Manila.

Roger Corales, who escaped unharmed, said Saturday he saw people crying for help as they disappeared under the falling earth, their hands grasping desperately for something to hold on to.

A landslide last year killed 10 people in the same village, prompting the Bureau of Mines and Geosciences to recommend that the landslide-prone area be abandoned. But many villagers, who depend on the local gold-mining industry for a living, refused to leave, Caro said.