December 18, 2002

Residents were moved out overnight from a dangerous part of the new county town of Badong in the Three Gorges area after a big landslide last week, Hubei Daily (Hubei ribao) reports. The landslide started moving quickly on Dec. 9, the newspaper said in its Dec. 14 report. The mass, about 250 metres long and 100 metres wide, contained 150,000 cubic metres of mud and rock, and moved three metres in just three hours, the newspaper said. Crops and trees were damaged, but there were no reports of injuries, it said.