Rescuers use explosives to clear boulders trapping China landslide victims

BEIJING — Rescue teams in southwestern China ‌used explosives on Monday to blast through heavy boulders hampering efforts to reach 34 people reported missing for three days after a landslide during ​torrential rain in an area famed for natural beauty, Reuters reported.Heavy excavators, rescue personnel, sniffer dogs, and technical experts were deployed at the disaster site as authorities raced against time to locate anyone still trapped beneath enormous piles of rock and mud.The landslide struck Pengshui Miao and Tujia Autonomous County in the early hours of Friday after days of rainfall destabilized the hillside. The collapse sent a massive torrent of earth, stones, and debris crashing onto a residential area, burying more than ten homes and causing widespread destruction.China is one of the most landslide-prone countries in the world, and eight people died in Friday’s disaster in the county of Penghui some 270 km (168 miles) from the high-rise urban center of the sprawling municipality of Chongqing.Monday’s blasting operation shattered a massive boulder in television images shown by state broadcaster CCTV, which added that ‌the mission had ‌entered a “deep rescue phase,” although ​it gave ‌no ⁠immediate details.The ​effort ⁠followed President Xi Jinping’s call for scientific search and rescue operations for the missing as well as a swift investigation into the cause of the landslide.Authorities evacuated more than 1,100 people after the landslide in the county home to about 500,000 people, where many communities cling to steep hillsides that hug the Wujian ⁠river.In the aftermath, video clips and photographs ‌showed a portion of the collapsed mountainside ‌cascading into the river, cutting off the ​main street of the ‌narrow, hillside township.Authorities have sent teams to investigate hidden geological dangers ‌and monitor the risk of secondary disasters, the official news agency Xinhua said on Saturday.With heavy to torrential rain forecast through Monday across multiple provinces, authorities have called for stronger safeguards in high-risk areas made ‌vulnerable by abundant groundwater, and intensive construction.China’s top flood-control authority said cumulative rainfall could reach 300 to 450 mm in northern and eastern Guangxi from Sunday to Tuesday, equivalent to up to 30 percent of the entire region’s annual precipitation.Eight small and medium-sized rivers in Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Anhui, ⁠and Shanghai ⁠are currently above flood warning levels, CCTV said on Monday.Intense summer rainfall, coupled with rapid urbanization and construction, as well as frequent tectonic activity, are key contributing factors to disasters in China, where mountains, hills and plateaus make up two-thirds of the landmass.Over the past decade, a total of about 294 people have been killed nationwide in at least five major, deadly landslides.The worst such incident killed more than 70 after the December 2015 collapse of a massive pile of construction ​debris at an industrial park ​in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen.