Buried in the Mountains: A Landslide in Sichuan and the Race Against Time

At 11:50 AM local time, while most of Sichuan was going about its day, the earth in Jinping village did what it’s done for millennia—it moved. But this time, it wasn’t a slow, imperceptible shift. It was violent. It was ruthless. It swallowed 10 homes whole. At least 30 people vanished beneath a tidal wave of dirt and rock.

The Chinese government wasted no time. A command center materialized on-site. Hundreds of emergency workers, sweat mixing with the winter cold, tore through debris with the kind of urgency that makes or breaks survival. Two people were pulled out alive. Hope lingers, but the clock ticks louder with every passing second.

President Xi Jinping issued the order: all hands on deck. Rescue every last soul. Minimize the body count. Clean up the wreckage. Premier Li Qiang followed with a mandate of his own: find out how this happened, assess the risks, and make sure no one else gets caught in nature’s crosshairs.

Fifty million yuan ($6.9 million) has been set aside to mend what’s broken—roads, power lines, lives. But money can’t rewind time. It won’t rebuild what was lost in the way it was before. And it won’t erase the grim reality that the southwestern mountains of China have always been prone to landslides. It happened in Yunnan last month. It happened in 2013. And it will happen again.

China’s south-west is a landscape both breathtaking and brutal. One moment, it’s postcard-perfect; the next, it’s a graveyard. Jinping village learned that lesson the hard way.

The mountains don’t care about government orders, but the people digging through the rubble do. And for the families waiting in agony, that’s all that matters right now.