Recently, some drivers in China came very close to being buried in a massive landslide.
In a video by Sina, a popular news portal in China, four cars are seen stationary in the middle of a mountain road at Anhua Mountain in Hunan Province, as though waiting for something to happen. Seconds later, brown mud cascades down the mountain slope and covers the road right in front of the first car. The mud sweeps aside huge trees and knocks down an electricity pole on the roadside.
“It’s over, it’s over,” said a man in the video. Another shouted that they couldn’t pass through the road now. After the mudslide came to a halt, the last two drivers immediately turned around and began heading in the opposite direction.
According to state-sponsored Changsha Evening Newspaper, the incident took place on China National Highway 536 at about 9 a.m. on March 18. About 10,000 cubic meters of mud washed down the mountain.
The driver of the first car in the video had stopped his car after seeing a few stones tumble down the slope. His instincts saved his life—and the lives of those behind him—as the mudslide occurred moments later. Because the first driver stopped, no one was injured and no vehicle was damaged.
The Anhua County Bureau of Land and Resources said that the rain during previous night had jolted some stones loose and triggered the mudslide, according to Changsha Evening Newspaper. The local Anhua government later dispatched over 10 excavators and dump trucks to clean up the road.
