Shenzhen landslide: Officials jailed for negligence
- Published
The landslide blanketed an area the equivalent of 50 football fields
Forty-five people have been sentenced for their part in a landslide in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen that killed 73 people in 2015.
Piles of waste soil and construction materials suddenly collapsed, engulfing a nearby district.
The manager of the company that ran the landfill site and the former head of Shenzhen's administration bureau were jailed for 20 years.
Nearly 20 of those sentenced were government officials.
They were convicted of negligence and abuse of power.
The dump site had a storage capacity of four million cubic metres and a maximum stacking height of 95m (310 ft) but when the landslide happened it was holding 5.8m cubic metres of material and the waste heaps stood 160m high, Xinhua reported.
The landslide covered an area the size of 50 football pitches and more than 200 diggers were brought in to clear the slurry.
A week later one official, whose job involved regulating construction sites and who had authorised the landfill site, apparently jumped to his death. It is not clear if he was under investigation.
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