Overdevelopment and environmental mismanagement are at least partly to blame for a mudslide that left more than 700 people dead over the weekend.Wang Shijin, an associate professor at Jiangxi University’s Research Center for Environment and Resources Law Institute, said rock and soil around the seat of Zhouqu county, located in Gansu’s Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, was unusually loose before the rains.
Wang said he could not exclude land mismanagement as the cause of the slide, adding that many of China’s landslides in recent years have been the result of human error.
“Over-mining is one of the reasons [leading to landslides]. The other reason is that after mining, [the related parties] do not shut down the site and just leave it there,” Wang said.
“No one pays attention to the safety issues which in turn affect the whole area,” he said.
Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan writer, said deforestation and over-construction of dams in the area were the two leading causes of the disaster in Zhouqu county.
“Since 2003, 47 electricity pylons have been built along the river in this little county. It’s because of this large scale of hydro-electric construction, coupled with the over-exploitation of mines in a county full of mining resources, such as gold,” Woeser said.
“Their reckless mining activities seriously damage the environment there.”
She added that local officials are trying to use the earthquake as a way to shift the focus away from the true cause of the mudslide—land mismanagement under their watch.
A Tibetan from Zhouqu, who asked to remain anonymous, said residents believe dam construction in the area may have contributed to the instability of the terrain.
“We suspect the construction of an excessive number of dams in the area might have affected the local environment and brought in unprecedented mudslides in the area.”
Rescue teams searched for 1,042 people missing Tuesday after flash floods and mudslides left 702 dead in Zhouqu county, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
Some 1,243 people have been rescued and 42 of them were found seriously injured, Xinhua quoted Tian Baozhong, head of the provincial civil affairs department, as saying.
A villager surnamed Li, who has volunteered at the hospital, said flood waters had not yet receded.
“There is still flooding at the hospital. All the streets are covered by water. Many people have been trying to save lives by digging.”
A Zhouqu resident surnamed Zhou said there appeared to be more bodies than survivors in the town.
"They are digging out [bodies] all over the place," he said. "They are all carrying corpses."
A Red Cross worker in Zhouqu county said it currently takes 10 hours for the caravan of vehicles carrying relief material to travel from the capital Lanzhou to the areas hardest hit by the slides.
“Road conditions are difficult. All our relief material and rescue crews are being sent there,” the worker said.
“We are concerned whether our relief material will arrive on time,” he said, adding that there are many Tibetans among the injured.
An official in Gannan Tibetan Prefecture who asked to remain anonymous said many people remain unaccounted for.
“The whereabouts of 1,000 to 2,000 people are unknown. They may be buried underneath the mud,” he said.
"If these people are truly missing, then there's probably no hope for them. This stuff is like liquid concrete."
“Much of the town is buried under mud and debris … [The site] is located in the Tibetan area. Of the 130,000 residents here, a little more than 40,000 are Tibetans. The percentage of Tibetans [in the area] is not very high,” the official said.
A second Gannan official said recent rainstorms had dumped more than 90 millimeters of rain on the region in a short space of time, with the floodwaters building up into a dammed lake, which then flooded the county town.
"The county town is situated in a pass between two hills, and it's very hard to get to," the official said.
"One one side you have the Bailong river, and on the other you have steep cliffs. They road was built along the top of the cliffs. It's the worst section of the entire Bailong riverside highway."
A member of the rescue crew surnamed Zhang said that even aid workers were at risk with further rains predicted by the China Meteorological Administration through Tuesday.
“We are without power and water… The electricity we are using is from emergency generators,” Zhang said.
“We are worried that if a mudslide happens again, things will be much worse.”
A worker with the local phone company said communications to the area had been severed in the slide.
“Cables have been broken. We are not able to get in touch with people over there [at the mudslide site].”
Floods in China this year have left more than 1,100 people dead and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions. The flooding is the worst China has seen in a decade.