BEIJING – China sent a vice prime minister to oversee recovery efforts and called for better safety measures after a road collapse killed at least 48 people in the country’s mountainous south.
The official Xinhua news agency said on Friday that Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing “stressed sparing no effort in carrying out rescue and relief work.”
The dispatch by Zhang, who is also a member of one of the ruling Communist Party’s top bodies, illustrates concern about a possible public backlash to the disaster, the latest in a series of deadly infrastructure failures. References to the collapse, which left a huge gash in the side of a cliff on which the highway was built, largely disappeared from public media on Friday.
Zhang’s presence follows calls from President Xi Jinping and No. 2 Communist Party official Premier Li Qiang to quickly deal with the tragedy. About 30 other victims were hospitalized. Three people were being identified by DNA samples, although it was unclear whether they had also died.
One side of the four-lane highway in Meizhou city gave way at around 2 a.m. Wednesday after a month of heavy rain in Guangdong province.
Twenty-three vehicles plunged into a deep ravine, some catching fire and raising thick clouds of smoke.
“Lessons should be drawn from the collapse and more should be done to improve disaster prevention and response capabilities, ensuring the safety of people’s lives and properties and overall social stability,” Xinhua said, citing the vice premier. minister.
Zhang also called for closer monitoring of weather patterns during the annual summer flood season that hits large areas of central and southern China, and an improvement in early warning systems and response times.
No official word has been released about any arrests or investigation into the collapse, which followed unusually intense weather including hailstorms and a tornado on April 27 that ripped through Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, killing five people and injuring 33. More Heavy rain is forecast, with many flights heading south through the region canceled or delayed.
More than 56 centimeters (22 inches) of rain has fallen in the past four weeks in the county where the road collapsed, more than four times as much as last year. Some villages in Meizhou were flooded in early April and the city has received additional rain in recent days.
The Ministry of Emergency Management also issued an urgent circular urging authorities to “draw lessons from the road collapse and take concrete measures to prevent similar accidents.”
The section of highway collapsed on the first day of the five-day May Day holiday, when many Chinese travel at home and abroad.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
