Two Killed In Zhejiang Province After Typhoon-Induced Mudslide Crushes Vehicles On Mountain Road

Hangzhou, China—Emergency rescue teams and heavy machinery units deployed to a mountainous sector of Zhejiang Province on Wednesday after a typhoon-triggered mudslide swept away three vehicles, leaving two people dead.

The disaster struck around 8:15 a.m. along a provincial highway passing through Taizhou jurisdiction. Saturation from days of torrential typhoon rainfall caused a steep hill slope to collapse, dumping thousands of tons of mud, trees, and boulders onto the roadway below.

The cascading soil mass struck a commuter bus and two private cars traveling along the valley route, pushing one vehicle into a riverbed and burying the others under heavy debris. Trailing motorists immediately notified local emergency dispatchers before attempting field rescues.

Fire and rescue personnel arrived alongside specialized K-9 search teams to search the earth pile. Emergency crews deployed hydraulic shovels and thermal imaging gear to pinpoint trapped vehicles buried beneath four feet of thick mud.

Rescuers recovered two bodies from a crushed passenger car that bore the brunt of the hillside collapse. Paramedics treated four other passengers extracted from the light bus for minor injuries before transporting them to a local county hospital.

Engineers from the provincial transport department closed a fifteen-mile stretch of the mountain highway to prevent further casualties from secondary slope failures. Heavy excavators worked through the afternoon to clear saturated soil and clear the blocked river channel below the road.

Local geological monitoring units set up real-time sensors along adjacent hillsides to track ground movement while cleanup crews cleared the roadway. Weather authorities warned that continued rainfall could trigger secondary landslides across low-lying mountain passes.

Zhejiang highway police maintained strict roadblocks at the mountain pass into Wednesday evening while heavy earthmoving equipment cleared the remaining debris.