The State Council, China's cabinet, dispatched a team of senior officials and experts, led by State Councilor Wang Yong, to Shenzhen on Monday to oversee the rescue work.
"The landslide mass is too loose and aquiferous," said Liu Guonan, a researcher with the China Academy of Railway Sciences, who participated in the rescue. It is the first time he has seen a landslide on such scale in his 30 years of work.
"When we organize excavations with large machinery, we have to consider both the possible harm to the buried people and also secondary collapse, which threatens rescue workers," said Yang Shengjun, head of the Shenzhen Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau.
SURVIVORS' MEMORY
"Seeing the mud approaching us like sea waves, I started running at once and dared not look back. I felt I would have been engulfed in it if I were just one second late," recalled Wang, who worked in a factory near the site. She said a sudden power cutoff at work at midday was accompanied by shouts of, "Run quickly!"
After running for four to five minutes, Wang said she made a quick glance back, seeing nothing but heavy dust. "One worker was trying to save his motorcycle, only to be buried by the debris."
Zhong Guanguo, 50, was preparing lunch when the landslide struck.
"At first I heard people shouting 'Run! Run!' from outside my house," he said.
"When I ran out, the mud came flying at my face," he recalled. He said he narrowly escaped with his wife, but their belongings have been buried along with their home.
Peng, whose father was injured and hospitalized, said his mother and brother were still missing, and his father witnessed several people being buried by the landslide as he fled.
The landslide occurred at a quarry-turned-dump. The exact cause is yet to be known.
"With the increasing size, the pile of waste was unstable," said Peng Weiping, a geologist in Guangdong Province.
Heavy trucks have been transporting silt and waste for the past two years, causing noise and pollution with many complaints, said a worker in the industrial park who declined to be identified.
According to the city's rule, regular safety checkups should be carried out on the facilities for construction waste by operators and government authorities.
The approval and management of the landslide-hit one is unclear.
Shenzhen authorities have launched a comprehensive safety overhaul of seven other construction waste dumps in the city.
