Landslide Devastates Chinese Industrial Park, 91 Missing

An official investigation has been ordered.

Rescuers search for survivors on a damaged building following a landslide in south China. (Photo: AP)      

At least 91 people were missing after a huge mound of mud and construction waste collapsed at a business park in southern China, burying 33 buildings, in the country’s latest industrial disaster.

Premier Li Keqiang ordered an official investigation into Sunday’s landslide in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen.

The mudslide smashed into multi-storey buildings at the Hengtaiyu Industrial Park in the city’s northwestern Guangming New District, toppling them in collisions that sent rivers of earth skyward.

Firefighters stand next to collapsed buildings after the landslide in China. (Photo: Reuters)

State television showed scenes of the devastation, with crumpled buildings sticking up from heaps of brown mud that stretched out across the edge of the industrial park. The mud had covered an area of more than 60,000 square metres and was six metres deep in parts.

Hundreds of rescuers were sifting through rubble looking for survivors. The Ministry of Land Resources blamed the landslide on a mountain of waste construction mud in the vicinity.