Search work has been hampered by rain and land and gravel sliding down the slope. The disaster left a curving earth-colored gash in the otherwise verdant forest landscape.
“Because some of the vehicles involved caught fire, the difficulty of the rescue operation has increased,” said Wen Yongdeng, the Communist Party secretary for the Meizhou emergency management bureau.
“Most of the vehicles were buried in soil during the collapse process, with a large volume of soil covering them,” he said.
He added that the prolonged heavy rainfall has saturated soil in the area, “making it prone to secondary disasters during the rescue process.”
