Zhouqu County, China (CNN) -- Chinese soldiers frantically dug through the mud with shovels, even with their bare hands, Tuesday to reach the second story of an apartment building in northwestern Zhouqu County. After 60 hours trapped under mud, Liu Ma Shendeng was alive.
The soldiers pulled out the 52-year-old man, a rare moment of joy in a search for survivors in which hope was fast diminishing.
The death toll doubled Tuesday to 702 people in massive mudslides triggered Sunday by rain in China's Gansu province, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Another 1,042 people are still missing.
The side of a mountain broke off in the darkness of night and tore through remote Zhouqu, burying many homes and ripping others apart. The path of the mudslide is now covered in three and four stories of rock and mud.
Some buildings, including the police department and a primary school, were flattened by the wall of mud. Others toppled over or vanished completely, buried under sludge many feet deep.
"There was a noise like thunder and then it came down from the sky," said one woman, who did not want to be identified. "There was no way to escape".
Liu was bedridden and too weak to talk. But he represented a miracle in this place of utter devastation.
Thousands of soldiers, policemen, firefighters and medics worked to search for survivors, the sounds of heaving and digging punctuated by the mournful cries of those who realized they have lost their loved ones. In some cases, entire families were buried alive. CNN
