A total of five people have been rescued from a collapsed building in China on Saturday after a team of emergency parastatals clawed through the rubble of a structure that housed a cinema and guesthouse overnight to rescue them.
Authorities have not yet revealed how many people they believe are still buried underneath the six-storey building, which had caved in on Friday afternoon in central Changsha city.
No casualties have been reported so far, but an announcement by Changsha said that “search and rescue work is still urgently underway”.
One of the top Communist Party officials was also dispatched to the scene, in a possible indication of the severity of the disaster as it unfolds.
State Councillor Wang Yong — appointed by the central government — was sent to lead a team to “guide the rescue and emergency response work”, an official statement said Saturday.
Some of the photos published by the state media showed a crumpled roof and railings at the scene, while some of the air conditioning units and other furnishings lay among the debris which were scattered all over the street. Some of the media footage also showed rescuers carrying a person into an ambulance late on Friday and communicating through rubble with those who remained trapped.
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Building collapses are not uncommon in China, due to weak safety standards and corruption among officials tasked with enforcement.
In January, Africa Today News, New York reported that an explosion triggered by a suspected gas leak demolished a building in the city of Chongqing and killed more than a dozen people. A total of twenty-five people also lost their lives in June 2021 when a gas blast hit a residential compound in the city of Shiyan.
Africa Today News, New York