The first person was pulled alive from the rubble of a landslide that buried 33 buildings in Shenzhen, China.
The 19-year-old man, Tian Zeming, was rescued at about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday -- 60 hours after the landslide happened Sunday at the industrial park.
#ChinaonTwitter: Man pulled out alive after 60 hrs buried in #Shenzhen landslide & More: https://t.co/CBczUTNiDL pic.twitter.com/HjgO0jbXE6— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) December 23, 2015
Reuters says Tian was coherent but his legs had been crushed. He directed soldiers to an area where he said there was another survivor, but rescuers found another body -- bringing the confirmed death toll to two. More than 70 people are still missing, according to Chinese authorities.
Tian is hospitalised in a stable condition but may lose one of his feet.
A #Shenzhen landslide victim was retrieved 3 hours after a survivor was found at the same location Wed. pic.twitter.com/zj7vzDlSW0— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) December 23, 2015
As of Tuesday morning, more than 4,000 rescuers have joined the rescue operations taking place across 16 locations where buildings had been buried. Nine hundred were evacuated as the land started to collapse.
This is a video of the ongoing rescue effort, posted on Tuesday by state media.
(To be able to pan the 360 degree video, you'll need to be watching on Chrome, Opera, Firefox or Internet Explorer on the desktop, or using the YouTube app on Android or iOS devices.)
Police blame dump site management for landslide
The government is blaming the landslide on a steep man-made mountain of dirt, where waste and construction material had been piled up against a hill to the height of 100 m (328 feet) over two years. After a bout of heavy rains, the soil around and beneath the mountain became unstable, causing the collapse, the Ministry of Land and Resources had said.
On Tuesday, the police raided the offices of Shenzhen Yixianglong Investment Development, the firm that owned the dump site, and arrested one of its deputy general managers.
Chinese papers say the site had still been used for 10 months beyond the permitted period, which ended on Feb. 21 this year. This additional usage may have earned Yixianglong an extra 7.5 million yuan (US$1.16 million).
The city of Shenzhen is a major manufacturing centre in the Guangdong province, just across the border from Hong Kong.