TWO people have been confirmed dead while 45 people remained missing after a landslide struck Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, local authorities said yesterday afternoon.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has demanded all-out search and rescue of the people missing in the landslide. He also demanded strengthened monitoring and early warning as well as scientific approach in search and rescue efforts to guard against secondary disasters.

More than 200 rescuers together with 33 firefighting vehicles and 10 loading machines were combing the debris to search for the missing, after the disaster happened in Liangshui Village, Tangfang Town in the city of Zhaotong at 5:51 a.m. yesterday.

“At around 6 a.m. I heard the rumbling of landslide. Every now and then there was a sound of collapse, accompanied by the clatter of falling rocks,” villager Deng Jieshu recalled.

Deng, who was about two kilometers from the site of landslide, saw at the scene that some houses were all buried, while some were crushed.

“Now rescuers have arrived, and about 200 of us have been relocated to a local primary school,” Deng said.

The buried villagers were from 18 households, according to the headquarters for the disaster relief. Emergency workers in orange overalls and helmets were digging through piles of collapsed bricks and stones in snow-covered mountains.

More than 200 residents were evacuated as the provincial commission for disaster reduction activated a Level-III emergency response for disaster relief.

Wang Xiangxi, minister of emergency management, has rushed to Zhenxiong, to guide the rescue efforts, according to a media release from the ministry.

Upon receiving news of the landslide, Wang immediately arranged for search and rescue operations to commence, asking local authorities to enhance monitoring at the site.

The release said 812 members of the national comprehensive fire and rescue team have arrived at the site with 174 vehicles.

Another 102 members of the country’s national rescue team, which usually deals with workplace accidents, and 33 employees from the China Anneng Construction Group Corporation have also joined the search and rescue effort, it noted.

(Xinhua, China Daily)