This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

At least 85 people remain missing in southern China a day after a mountain of construction waste and soil swept over dozens of buildings, in the latest disaster to hit a nation increasingly facing the consequences of its rapid industrialisation.

Officials said debris from the 100-metre hill in Shenzhen, the city adjoining Hong Kong, buried or damaged 33 buildings on an industrial park, including factories, offices, workshops and dormitories.



The debris, excavated soil, cement and other construction waste had been piled on the hillside for two years amid the city’s ongoing construction boom, and was seemingly loosened by heavy rain.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Footage of buildings collapsing in the landslide

China’s premier, Li Keqiang, ordered an investigation into Sunday’s landslide, which came four months after a series of huge explosions at a warehouse filled with chemicals in the northern city of Tianjin killed at least 50 people.



China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said 85 people remained unaccounted for following the landslide, down from an earlier figure of 91 following new checks on missing people.

Most are expected to have died. A website update by the firefighting bureau of the public security ministry showed photos of a huge area covered in thick red mud. Posts on the website said the mud had swept through many of the buildings, with the chances of survival seen as extremely small.



According to the state-run CCTV, just seven people were rescued overnight, and 13 were in hospital, three with life-threatening injuries.



Liu Qingsheng, the vice mayor of Shenzhen, which was little more than a village before it was picked by China’s leaders in the late 1970s as a new industrial zone, said the landslide covered 380,000 square metres, about the area of 60 football fields.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted another official as saying the mud was up to 10 metres thick in many places, and inundated with water, making rescue attempts especially difficult as rescuers could not walk on it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Furniture is pictured among the debris of collapsed buildings after the landslide hit an industrial park in Shenzhen. Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters

One witness told AFP he was heading home when he saw the landslide. “I saw the houses collapse, all the factories got buried,” said Liu Youqiang, 45. A migrant worker told the agency that 16 friends or family members were missing after his home was buried.



The ministry of land and resources said said heavy rain had loosened the huge pile of building debris. “The pile was too big, the pile was too steep, leading to instability and collapse,” it said in a statement.

Some locals said officials had been negligent in allowing the waste to build up. “If the government had taken proper measures in the first place, we would not have had this problem,” one resident, Chen Chengli, told AP. “We’ve been down this road before, it’s too crazy.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aerial view of the landslide in Liuxi industrial park. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images

His neighbour, Yi Jimin, dismissed the idea it was a natural disaster. “Heavy rains and a collapse of a mountain are natural disasters, but this wasn’t a natural disaster, this was man-made,” Yi said.



The landslide sparked an explosion in a section of a natural gas pipeline owned by PetroChina, the country’s leading oil and gas producer. By Monday morning, the fire was extinguished and a temporary section of pipe was being laid.