Society
10 die in Shaanxi landslide
By Ma Lie (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-11 07:01
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Trapped wife calls husband for assistance on cell phone
Yulin, Shaanxi: Tenpeople are dead and 18 are missing after a landslide hit a mountainous village early on Wednesday in Zizhou county, Yulin, Shaanxi province.
About 90,000 cubic meters of earth hit 15 houses in Shuanghuyu village on Wednesday at about 1:30 am, burying 44 people as they slept, Guo Peicai, magistrate of Zizhou county, told China Daily.
Local mother Guo Yongxia and her 12-year-old son Wu Yangyang were the first survivors to be pulled from the landslide at about 2:30 am.
"I was woken up by a terrible sound like an explosion outside and our house soon collapsed," Guo said from her hospital bed.
"I was trapped in the collapsed house and made a phone call to my husband who went to see his relatives in another village, and he and other rescuers came to take me and my son out."
Yuan Hongru, an official with the county government, said the injured survivors received treatment in hospital and 10 had since been discharged.
"The county government organized armed police, firefighters, mine rescuers and local villagers to participate in the rescue work, with two loaders, one excavator and a life detector to try in every way possible to rescue people under the earth," the official said.
In response to the tragedy, the Shaanxi provincial government urged the local government to make every effort to rescue people buried underneath the dirt and Hong Feng, the deputy governor, traveled to the scene to guide the rescue work.
Tents have been erected for farmers who survived the landslide and lost their houses. The local hospital set up special wards for treating of the injured.
Li Jinzhu, Party chief of Yulin, left Beijing, where he was attending the session of the National People's Congress, and rushed back for the rescue work on Wednesday.
The rescue work is continuing.
