Man rescued after 60 hours under rubble of landslide in China

A teenager has been rescued from a landslide after spending 60 hours under the rubble in Shenzhen, China.

Tian Zeming was buried when a huge mound of construction debris and earth collapsed on Sunday, covering more than 30 buildings.

Zeming, a 19-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan province, was found at about 3.30am on Wednesday, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Just over three hours later, reports the Guardian, rescue workers in orange and red uniforms managed to hoist him from the scene of the disaster on the outskirts of Shenzhen, a sprawling factory hub in Guangdong province.

Xinhua said Tian, who is from the city of Chongqing, had suffered multiple fractures but was in a stable condition after 67 hours buried in the rubble.

Al Jazeera's Adrian Brown said the rescue of Tian Zeming had raised the morale of the thousands-strong team of rescuers, but questions needed to be asked of the Chinese government.

"Big questions are being asked here about how this was allowed to happen," he said.

"We are seeing a familiar theme here: lax government regulations. We know that the pile of waste had grown to be about 100m high ... and that, according to one local report, the government had warned about an accident like this happening."

Locals appear to be blaming the government for not doing more to stop the accident from occurring.

"They were dumping dirt here day and night," one man, who gave his name only as Zhang, told the New York Times. "We complained, but the government turned a blind eye."

Rescuers are still searching for more than 70 people in the Shenzhen area.