Villagers and rescuers in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, are still searching for an 11-year-old girl more than a day after she fell into a roadside ditch and was carried away by deep, rushing water from melting snow.

Wang Chunlan, from Fengshou village, Sheli street in Acheng district, fell into the roadside ditch on her way to the grocery store in the village at around 5 pm on Sunday and was still missing after more than 24 hours of search efforts, according to a news statement from the publicity department of the district government.

Liu Cai, head of the street office of Sheli, said that chances that the girl survived are dropping, given the low temperatures in Harbin at this time of year, especially at night, when they fall below freezing.

"We are searching all the sections along the ditch and the river it feeds to. But we still cannot locate her," he said.

The district government put most of the district's police officers and firefighters on the search effort, and rescuers searched five times under a bridge.

Liu said the authority will try its best to find the girl, whether she could survive or not.

The roadside ditch, empty most of the year, was filled with snow water as deep as 1 meter recently.

Harbin received more snowfall than usual this winter, and the rise in temperatures recently caused a sudden increase in the volume of snow water in the ditch, Liu added.

Wang was walking past the ditch to avoid the water in the muddy road with another girl when she slipped into the ditch, a local television channel reported.

She might have stepped on livestock waste dumped along the river by local villagers, according to her parents.

Her parents rushed to the scene hearing the news and her mother jumped into the water three times to search for the girl, their only child.

They were later joined by more than 60 villagers and more than 200 police officers.

The incident came just 10 days after Yang Lijun, a 21-year-old woman in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, fell into a 6-meter-deep manhole.

She remains missing despite days of searching by local rescue workers.

That accident prompted local authorities in Changsha's Furong district to install nets inside manholes to prevent more pedestrians from falling, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Contact the writers at xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn and zhouhuiying@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/02/2013 page5)