State media: 43 dead, 3 missing after landslide in southwest China Chinese rescue workers search for buried residents in a disaster-hit area in Gaopo village, southwest China's Yunnan province on January 11, 2013. A landslide occurs around 8 a.m. Friday in southwest China's Yunnan province 14 houses are destroyed; 27 adults and 19 children are buried, officials tell Xinhua The disaster prompts a large-scale rescue and relief effort (CNN) -- Burrowing by hand and by machine, Chinese soldiers and emergency personnel toiled on steep, frigid slopes late Friday looking for three missing after a devastating landslide -- one that claimed the lives of 43 of their fellow villagers, state media reports. Video from state-run CCTV showed what was once Gaopo, a mountain community of 46 people in southwest China's Yunnan Province. Some houses were crushed; others had ceased to exist entirely, except for stray bricks that made their way downhill. Mud-drenched rescuers swarming the scene dug fervently with shovels, looking for signs of life, the CCTV footage showed. Instead they found shredded clothes, wallets and other evidence of those killed in the disaster. "We pulled out several people, one of whom was breathing weakly," Li Yongju, a 50-year-old resident from the neighboring community of Zengjiazhai, told the state-run Xinhua news agency. But after a while, he died. Zhou Benju was born in the landslide hit area, then married a man from Zengjiazhai and moved there. A loud noise woke her, and later she learned the toll the event had taken on her family. "In this disaster, ... my grandma, brother, uncle and my aunt's family members died," Zhou said, according to Xinhua. The landslide struck around 8:20 a.m. Friday, triggered by rain and snow that had saturated the largely rocky area for 10 straight days, Li Lianju, deputy director of the Yunnan Land and Resources Department, told state media. About 210,000 cubic meters (275,000 cubic yards) of mud and rock plunged "and suddenly rushed into the one-hectare residential area of the village .... immediately burying and completely destroying 14 houses and damaging two other houses," Li said. The Zhaojiagou area of Gaopo village, located about 550 kilometers (340 miles) northeast of Yunnan's provincial capital of Kunming, hadn't experienced landslides before, added Li. But Friday morning, 27 adults and 19 children in the community of 468 people were buried, according to the local civil affairs bureau said. Two suffered non-life-threatening injuries, Xinhua reported. The disaster prompted a massive search and rescue effort. More than 20 excavators and front-end loaders were on site. And there were over 1,000 soldiers, police, firefighters and mine rescue workers participating in the effort, according to local Community Party official Feng Xuelan. "Many of the soldiers had even no time for their meals," said Liu Guanneng, leader of the Zhaotong City fire squad, from the scene. China's newly installed Communist Party chief Xi Jinping and other leaders ordered the rescue effort to continue, and that steps be taken to resettle surviving residents and prevent further disasters. Members of 57 households whose homes might imperiled by new landslides are now safely at a local primary school, in emergency tents or with relatives, Feng said. Some 230 tents, 300 quilts and 300 coats have been sent to the areas, in addition to hundreds of packages of food, to the area by the government and provincial Red Cross group. Regional governments have set aside 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) for the rescue and relief effort, reports Xinhua. Each victim's family will get an initial subsidy of 10,000 yuan ($1,600), according to Zhaotong City Mayor Liu Jianhua. CNN's Greg Botelho contributed to this report.