BEIJING — A landslide hit a county in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing on Friday, burying an unknown number of people and causing several residential buildings in the area below to collapse, according to Chinese state media reports.
A community worker in Pengshui county first noticed rocks beginning to fall around 8 a.m. local time and immediately sounded an emergency alarm, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Authorities quickly ordered more than 60 residents to evacuate the area.
However, before the evacuation could be completed, the full landslide hit at 9:08 a.m., trapping some of those who had not yet escaped. The total number of people buried remained unclear as officials worked to confirm the figures.
The official Xinhua news agency reported that nine individuals had been rescued from the debris, and none of them were in life-threatening condition. The cause of the landslide had not been determined as of the initial reports.
Video footage broadcast by CCTV captured rocks and debris cascading down onto a group of riverside homes. People were seen running from the disaster scene as a massive cloud of dust rose behind them. A separate dashcam video, shared on social media platform X and confirmed as authentic by Reuters, showed a hillside giving way and sending wreckage across a road, forcing vehicles and a motorcycle to come to a sudden stop.
China’s Ministry of Emergency Management elevated its response to a level-two emergency and sent a 100-person rescue team to the area. An additional 206 rescue personnel and 49 vehicles from the country’s fire and rescue force were also deployed to assist in the recovery operation, according to a ministry statement.
