Rescuers carry a body of a victim found at the workers’ dormitory damaged by a landslide in southeast China’s Fujian province. (AP)
Beijing — Rescue teams have recovered the bodies of 31 victims while seven people were still listed as missing Monday following a landslide at the site of a hydropower project in southern China after days of heavy rain, authorities said.
Rescuers aided by experts sent by the central government were searching with tools and sniffer dogs for signs of life, while mechanical diggers hauled away stones and soil, part of a 100,000-cubic-meter mountain of rain-saturated debris that buried an office building and a living area for construction workers early Sunday.
Continuing heavy rain in the area was hampering the rescue effort and more evacuations were being organized, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
“We were asleep when the mountains began to jolt very strongly and before we knew it, sand and mud were flowing into our room,” survivor Deng Chunwu told Xinhua. He and three other workers survived by huddling underneath a supporting pole.
Their room was shifted a distance of 10 meters by the flowing mud, Deng said.
A number of other people were being treated for bone fractures and other injuries, Xinhua and state broadcaster China Central Television said.
More than 600 rescuers, including firefighters and police, were searching for the missing and attempting to clear sections of roads leading to the site that had been made impassable by mudslides and flooding, hindering efforts to get heavy machinery through.