On February 8th at around 11:50 am, a major landslide occurred in Jinping Village, Muai Town, Yunlian County, Yibin City, Sichuan Province, resulting in significant casualties and property damage. The before-and-after images of the disaster have been exposed. From the comparative images, it is clearly visible that before the landslide, the area’s mountains were intact with good vegetation coverage; whereas after the landslide, there was a large-scale collapse of the mountain, with mudslides covering the village and roads, causing severe destruction.
As of 11:00 am on February 9th, it was preliminarily confirmed that this landslide had buried 10 households and 1 production house, resulting in 1 fatality, 28 missing persons, and 2 injured individuals.
According to reports from mainland Chinese media like Cover News, the high-altitude mountain landslide has transformed into debris flow, creating a debris accumulation body approximately 1.2 kilometers long, with a thickness of about 10 to 20 meters and a width of around 100 meters, with a landslide volume exceeding 100,000 cubic meters. Since the landslide is still ongoing.
Technicians are using drones to obtain on-site three-dimensional imagery and generate a three-dimensional oblique photographic model. The before-and-after images of this disaster were produced by relevant departments to showcase the changes in the mountains and village before and after the landslide, providing a visual representation of the severity of the disaster. By 8:00 am on February 9th, 3 sets of 9 images were completed.
The characteristic of this mountain landslide is the large collapsed area. According to current preliminary estimates, the collapsed area is roughly the size of 16 standard soccer fields, and the collapse has a certain thickness; many houses have been pushed to faraway locations; and more landslides are still expected to occur.
On February 8th, when the mountain landslide occurred, local residents like Mr. Huang witnessed the event. He was at the foot of the mountain and saw the entire mountain sliding down, engulfed in dust for about ten minutes, with large rocks continuing to slide down sporadically.
Another villager in a village opposite the scene heard a loud rumbling sound and went outside to check, only to discover rocks sliding down from a height of several hundred meters on the other side, some as big as fists, with the landslide mountain being several tens of meters wide.
Online videos show a large area buried after a mountain landslide.
Regarding this tragedy, reports from Jiemian News point out that villagers mentioned there were signs of a landslide in the second half of last year but they were not taken seriously.
Several villagers mentioned that a local coal mine, Jinjiu Coal Mine, has been conducting underground coal mining operations for a long time. Villagers believe that the underground cavities have been gradually expanding, as they noticed landslide signs as early as the second half of last year, with rocks even rolling down to block the road. However, local authorities only took simple protective measures on the roads, such as using wire mesh to enclose parts of the road, without informing villagers to evacuate.