Families buried in China mudslide

About 28 families are buried under the rubble after the collapse of six or seven apartment blocks after landslides caused by typhoons in eastern China. So far, two people have been confirmed dead, but that figure is expected to rise. The landslide hit the town of Pengxi, near Wenzhou city just before midnight last night - a day after 600 people were declared missing when mudslides sent a mountainside crashing into a village in southern Taiwan. The disasters were triggered by heavy rains caused by the deadly Typhoon Morakot, which has battered south east Asia.

In Pengxi in China’s Zhejiang province, rescuers worked through the night to free people trapped in the rubble, and by this morning had managed to get six people out alive.Two people have been confirmed dead so far and the toll is expected to rise, he adds. Six or seven apartment blocks with an estimated 28 families in each are buried in the rubble, said the BBC. But conflicting reports from Chinese officials said only six people were there at the time and all had been pulled out alive - although two died later. It took "one second" for the mud and rocks to engulf the four-storey apartment buildings, a witness told Chinese television.

Described as the worst weather to hit Taiwan in half a century, typhoon Morakot weakened to a tropical storm yesterday but it has still been lashing south eastern China with heavy rain, which triggered the mudslide. The building’s collapse again brings into question the safety of buildings in China after last year’s Sichuan earthquake, in which many schools collapsed, because they were not built to proper safety standards. More than one million people have been evacuated from their homes and six reported dead, according to BBC report from Beijing.

Across the country, hundreds of villages and towns had been flooded and more than 2,000 houses and buildings had collapsed, said state news agency Xinhua. In Taiwan this morning rescue operations restarted to look for more survivors from Sunday’s mudslide in the south-western mountain village of Shiao. About 50 people had been rescued and another 150 found alive elsewhere in the village, according to BBC reports. Helicopters were dropping food and trying to air-lift survivors from the village, where roads have been cut off.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children