BEIJING, May 11 (UPI) -- Rescue workers Wednesday sought to free 24 farmers trapped by a massive soil collapse in China's Shanxi province, state media reported.
Xinhua said the fate of the 12 men and 12 women is still unknown. An estimated 650,000 cubic meters of loess sank Monday night in Qiaonan, a village in Shanxi's Jixian county.
Loess is a type of fine particulate yellowish-brown soil blown from the deserts of Mongolia that settled in north China and became densely compacted over millennia.
The cave-in was described by Xinhua as "a typical natural geological disaster," one that measured more than 820 feet in length and more than 260 feet in height.
Peasants in parts of Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Hebei and Henan provinces have dug cliff face cave dwellings in the easily eroded soil for centuries. Sixteen people survived Monday's disaster, which swallowed 11 residences.
China is home to world's largest loess plateau which covers an area of more than 400,000 square miles.
