New snow-slides have cut off the only path for rescuers to get to a tunnel construction site in Xinjiang to search for 14 missing from an avalanche on Thursday.
Though not of a large scale, the slides left rescuers stranded on Sunday morning about three kilometers away from the tunnel at a remote mountainous area known as "Guozigou" in the Kazak Autonomous Prefecture of Ili.
The tunnel is about 500 kilometers from Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Excavators at the rescue headquarters were spurred to clear the road with the new slides. However, the unexpected interruption dimmed the chance of survival for the 14 missing workers. They have been trapped for more than three days, said Yan Cheng, a police official in charge of the rescue.
"The rescuers stationed near the tunnel told us a heavy fog blanketed the site and visibility was less than 10 meters in the morning."
The avalanche occurred at around 10 a.m. Thursday when 22 workers were at the site. One escaped.
One more body was discovered at 2:25 a.m. in the wracked machine room near the tunnel. So far, rescuers have recovered two bodies and pulled out five others alive as of Sunday morning.
Hou Qiwei, the local hospital president, joined in the rescue operation. He remained confident the missing might survive.
"There might be cracks in the drifts to let fresh air in. So long as there is air, there is hope," he said.
The workers are from the Xinjiang Zhanyou Tianyuan Machinery and Engineering Company. The firm is building a 3.8-kilometer-long tunnel, part of a cross-border pipeline project to send gas from Turkmenistan to Shanghai.
Rescue teams have employed police dogs and life detecting equipment to search for the missing, however, more than 1 million cubic meter of snow in the tunnel remained the biggest obstacle for the rescue, Yan said.
Experts blamed the mechanical vibration of machines in the tunnel for the avalanche. They suggested construction be avoided in snow-hit mountainous areas in winter.
(Xinhua News Agency March 16, 2008)