China landslide leaves 91 missing

Witnesses of the landslide late yesterday morning described a mass of red earth and mud racing towards an industrial park in the city of Shenzhen in "huge waves" before burying or crushing homes and factories, twisting some of them into grotesque shapes.

The landslide covers an area of 380 000 square meters - about 60 football fields - in many areas more than 10 meters thick, said Liu Qingsheng, the vice mayor of the city bordering Hong Kong, in a press conference.

There were 91 people missing as of 9:00 am (0100 GMT) today, according to officials from the city's emergency office cited by the Shenzhen Evening News.

The landslide was caused by the improper storage of waste soil from construction sites, according to the official newspaper of the Ministry of Land and Resources.

WATCH: Terrifying footage shows the moment the landslide reduces a four-storey building to rubble.

The soil was allegedly illegally stored in heaps 100 meters (330 feet) high at an old quarry site and turned to mud during heavy rain Sunday morning, the state-run Global Times reported.

Industrial accidents are common in China, with safety regulations often overlooked due to corruption. An explosion in August in the port city of Tianjin that killed nearly 200 people was blamed on improperly stored chemicals.

In the Shenzhen incident, about 900 people were moved out of harm's way before the landslide struck. Four people have been rescued, of whom three had minor injuries.

Heavy rain 

Rescue operations were slowed by numerous obstacles, including continued rain, low visibility overnight, and mud, Ao Zhuoqian, a member of the city's fire brigade said.

"Seeing the scene now, of course I feel sad," said Wen Yanchang, 28, who was amidst a group of around 100 people watching construction trucks start clearing the landslide. 

"It's unimaginable because I live near here but at the time I didn't hear it happening," he said.

It is reported nearly 3 000 armed police and firefighters had been deployed to help with the rescue. 

He Weiming, a migrant worker at a temporary shelter, said he had lost contact with 16 friends and family members, including his parents, wife and two children, and had made dozens of phone calls to try to find them. All went unanswered. 

"When my brother and I drove out in the morning to go collect garbage, our home was still fine, but when we came back... the house had been buried in mud = you couldn’t even see the roof of our four-metre-high sheet metal house," he said - weeping and flipping through photos of his children on his cellphone.

"There are many other homes around mine - I don't know if others escaped."

The slide ruptured a natural gas pipeline and triggered an explosion heard about four kilometres (2.5 miles) away, Xinhua said.

Nearby gas stations have stopped supplying the pipeline and no gas leaks have been found, the Global Times cited the local fire department as saying. 

A landslide last month that engulfed 27 homes in rural Zhejiang province killed 38 people.