Rescuers battle on in Zhouqu
Source: Xinhua/Shanghai Daily |
August 12, 2010, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
HEAVY rains lashed Zhouqu County in northwest China's Gansu Province yesterday as the weekend landslide death toll jumped to 1,117. Hopes of finding survivors are fading fast.
The provincial government last night listed 627 people as missing in the disaster, with mud, stones and debris covering many houses.
The National Meteorological Center warned there was a "relatively large" chance of more landslides in the coming days, with up to 90 millimeters of rain forecast tomorrow.
Rescuers who have swarmed into Zhouqu are not giving up hope of finding anyone else alive, but they say chances are slim in the choking mud, so thick in places it has piled up to what used to be the third or fourth floor of buildings.
Logs and stones have been laid over the sludge to ease access. They seem almost to float when stepped on, threatening to give way, and plunge rescuers into the morass.
"It's different from an earthquake. With all this mud it gets into every corner of a room. You drown," said Dan Xiaoli, a rescue worker from neighboring Sichuan Province, where tens of thousands died in a devastating earthquake two years ago.
"But we need to keep looking in case there is a miracle," she said.
Rescuers were last night trying to locate a possible survivor after they were told cries for help from a partially collapsed building were heard.
Other troops and rescue teams joined by traumatized survivors turned to recovering bodies and seeing to the needs of the living. Clean drinking water was a primary concern, with most local sources destroyed or too polluted to use.
Entire communities in Zhouqu County were swallowed up when the debris-choked Bailong River jumped its banks on Sunday, releasing wave after wave of mud and rubble-strewn water. While torrential rains were the direct cause, tree cutting that left the dry hills exposed and the weakening of cliff faces by the massive 2008 earthquake were seen as factors.
Buildings were torn from their foundations, their lower floors blown out by the force of the water. Three villages comprising hundreds of households were entirely buried and much of the county seat left submerged.
"In some households, all the people have died," making the counting of the dead more difficult, Zhang Weixing, a Ministry of Civil Affairs official, told reporters.
Crews using explosives and excavators rushed to drain an unstable lake on the Bailong River, fearing more rain could cause a massive breach, bringing more misery to the town.
"The danger of the barrier lake collapsing has been basically eliminated," Jiao Yong, deputy vice minister of the Ministry of Water Resources, said. Jiao said relief workers have dug a 1-kilometer drainage channel along the barrier lake.
"So far it has worked. The water level has fallen 0.81 meters," he said.
Disinfectant crews in protective suits sprayed chemicals across the ground and over machinery, the smell of death heavy in the air.
Numerous cases of dysentery were reported, while infected injuries, a lack of sanitation and clean drinking water and accumulating garbage increased the risk of typhoid, cholera and other diseases.
But the deputy director of the Health Ministry's emergency office, Zhang Guoxin, said there have been no reports of a disease outbreak.
More than 420 people injured in the disaster had been treated as of yesterday.
About 60 with serious injuries had been sent to hospitals in Lanzhou, the provincial capital and Tianshui City.
The provincial government last night listed 627 people as missing in the disaster, with mud, stones and debris covering many houses.
The National Meteorological Center warned there was a "relatively large" chance of more landslides in the coming days, with up to 90 millimeters of rain forecast tomorrow.
Rescuers who have swarmed into Zhouqu are not giving up hope of finding anyone else alive, but they say chances are slim in the choking mud, so thick in places it has piled up to what used to be the third or fourth floor of buildings.
Logs and stones have been laid over the sludge to ease access. They seem almost to float when stepped on, threatening to give way, and plunge rescuers into the morass.
"It's different from an earthquake. With all this mud it gets into every corner of a room. You drown," said Dan Xiaoli, a rescue worker from neighboring Sichuan Province, where tens of thousands died in a devastating earthquake two years ago.
"But we need to keep looking in case there is a miracle," she said.
Rescuers were last night trying to locate a possible survivor after they were told cries for help from a partially collapsed building were heard.
Other troops and rescue teams joined by traumatized survivors turned to recovering bodies and seeing to the needs of the living. Clean drinking water was a primary concern, with most local sources destroyed or too polluted to use.
Entire communities in Zhouqu County were swallowed up when the debris-choked Bailong River jumped its banks on Sunday, releasing wave after wave of mud and rubble-strewn water. While torrential rains were the direct cause, tree cutting that left the dry hills exposed and the weakening of cliff faces by the massive 2008 earthquake were seen as factors.
Buildings were torn from their foundations, their lower floors blown out by the force of the water. Three villages comprising hundreds of households were entirely buried and much of the county seat left submerged.
"In some households, all the people have died," making the counting of the dead more difficult, Zhang Weixing, a Ministry of Civil Affairs official, told reporters.
Crews using explosives and excavators rushed to drain an unstable lake on the Bailong River, fearing more rain could cause a massive breach, bringing more misery to the town.
"The danger of the barrier lake collapsing has been basically eliminated," Jiao Yong, deputy vice minister of the Ministry of Water Resources, said. Jiao said relief workers have dug a 1-kilometer drainage channel along the barrier lake.
"So far it has worked. The water level has fallen 0.81 meters," he said.
Disinfectant crews in protective suits sprayed chemicals across the ground and over machinery, the smell of death heavy in the air.
Numerous cases of dysentery were reported, while infected injuries, a lack of sanitation and clean drinking water and accumulating garbage increased the risk of typhoid, cholera and other diseases.
But the deputy director of the Health Ministry's emergency office, Zhang Guoxin, said there have been no reports of a disease outbreak.
More than 420 people injured in the disaster had been treated as of yesterday.
About 60 with serious injuries had been sent to hospitals in Lanzhou, the provincial capital and Tianshui City.
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