31 people feared dead as landslide buries bus
Updated: 2007-11-24 10:37
Badong, Hubei -- Thirty-one people are feared dead after the bus they were on was crushed by a landslide at the entrance to a tunnel in Badong county, Hubei Province on Tuesday, local government officials said on Friday.
Rescue workers have pulled 29 bodies from the debris of a central China landslide and are continuing their search for victims, the Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday morning.
Most of the dead are believed to have been aboard a bus from Shanghai to Lichuan, a small city in the central province of Hubei, but rescuers have not ruled out chances that two workers reported missing since Tuesday could be among them, the rescue headquarters said early on Saturday.
The tunnel builder, China Railway Tunnel Group, has sent 300 workers and three excavators to search for the missing people.
Ren Shimao, vice-governor of Hubei, and Lu Chunfang, vice-minister of railways, were at the site supervising rescue work.
A statement issued by the government of Lichuan, a city in the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, said, "after repeated checks with various authorities", it was determined the bus was carrying 31 people when the tragedy occurred, "and the identities of 26 have so far been confirmed".
One of the rescue workers said: "About 50 meters of highway are covered with rubble and boulders, with the largest measuring about 900 cu m. It has been very difficult for us to carry out the search and we have to blow the boulder up before we can remove the rubble."
Two drivers, 29-year-old Tan Zonglin and 41-year-old Peng Yimin, and a conductor, 22-year-old Zhang Li, are among those feared dead.
Thirteen of the victims were from five families, including a four-month-old boy, his 20-year-old mother and two one-year-old boys, according to an incomplete list of passengers posted on the website.
Most of those confirmed to have been on the bus - 17 men and nine women - were residents of Lichuan.
The bus, registered in Lichuan, was on a return journey from Shanghai.
The landslide occurred at about 8:40 am on Tuesday at the entrance to the tunnel. Some 3,000 cu m of rubble fell onto National Highway 318, which connects Shanghai and the Tibet Autonomous Region and is the main route through western Hubei.
Rescuers started searching for the vehicle after the bus company reported it missing on Wednesday, Zeng Xiangguo, director of the public security department of Enshi, said.
Teams used explosives to clear large boulders and reached the bus at about 4 am on Friday, but found no signs of life, a source from the China Railway Tunnel Group said.
The landslide also killed a worker at the tunnel construction site and injured another. Two others are missing.
Sources said the economic cost of the landslide, which might have been caused by heavy rains, was about 10 million yuan ($1.3 million).
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