Man Rescued Three Days After Mudslide in China

A young migrant worker has been rescued alive from the rubble of a massive landslide that wiped out an industrial park in southern China Sunday.

In an announcement dated July 10, officials said that work at the site was not being carried out according to approved plans and ordered the Hongao Construction Waste Dump to “speed up” work to bring its operations into line.

The landslide eventually blanketed a vast area of 380,000 sq m (455,000 sq yards) – the equivalent of about 50 football fields.

A nearby section of the West-to-East natural gas pipeline exploded after the landslide struck the Hengtaiyu industrial park on December 20, causing more than 100,000 square meters of debris.

Following surgery, Tian is conscious and stable, hospital President Wang Guangming said, adding that he is extremely weak, dehydrated and has sustained several soft tissue injuries and multiple fractures.

The male survivor, Tian Zemin, 19, was pulled from the debris, about 67 hours after the landslide.

“We stopped because of the landslide“, said a Bujiuwo waste collection site worker, who gave his family name as Huang.

“He told the soldiers who rescued him, there is another survivor close by”, Xinhua said, though it later reported rescuers had found another body rather than a survivor.

Heavy machinery continues to rake through the thousands of tonnes of soil and rubble that has swollen up factories and residential buildings, even though the 72-hour golden period for saving lives has ended.

On Tuesday, the police raided the offices of Shenzhen Yixianglong Investment Development, the firm that owned the dump site, and arrested one of its deputy general managers. In the Shenzhen disaster, the deadly mound of debris was created to fix another problem, the haphazard and sometimes unsafe dumping of dirt and construction waste.

“We will do everything we can and mobilize all possible forces”, he said. He was from Chongqing municipality, according to Xinhua News Agency.

“Residents have said raised questions about why officials did not act to stop the growing mountain of construction waste, which they said they had feared was unsafe. More than 1,800 people have been evacuated from the area”, he said.

The latest in a series of fatal accidents in the world’s most populous country, the tragedy in Shenzhen came only months after nearly 200 people died in a massive chemical blast in the port city of Tianjin.