(Beijing) Two people were able to be extracted on Sunday from the rubble of a building that collapsed in central China on Friday, bringing to seven the number of survivors found since this disaster of unknown origin, according to Chinese media. .
Updated yesterday at 10:15 a.m.
The rescue teams in turn pulled out a person covered in dust, then carried on a stretcher according to images from public television CCTV, then a woman, later, after “detecting signs of life”.
When the latter was discovered, “she was in relatively good condition. Her vital signs were quite stable and she could hold a normal conversation with the rescuers outside,” said a CCTV reporter present at the scene, adding that the woman had been separated from the rescuers by a three-foot wall. ‘thickness.
Five people had already been rescued on Saturday. But dozens more remained stranded or missing on Sunday, two days after the eight-story building collapsed in the city of Changsha. At least 16 people are still believed to be trapped while nearly 40 others could not be reached, authorities said.
The building housed a hotel, apartments and a cinema.
Changsha police said nine people were arrested on Sunday in connection with the accident, including the owner of the building and security inspectors suspected of falsifying the results of an inspection of the building.
City Mayor Zheng Jianxin said more than 700 rescue workers were dispatched to the scene and “no effort will be spared” to search for those trapped under the rubble, a tangle of metal and concrete through which firefighters were fighting their way. , according to state media images.
President Xi Jinping on Saturday called for a search “at all costs” and ordered a full investigation into the cause of the collapse.
A senior Communist Party official was dispatched to the scene – an indication of the severity of the disaster.
China’s Emergency Management Minister Huang Ming urged officials to “completely eliminate all kinds of hidden security risks” during a meeting on Saturday.
Building collapses are not uncommon in China, due to poor safety and construction standards but also corruption among officials responsible for monitoring those standards.
In January, an explosion triggered by a suspected gas leak destroyed a building in the sprawling municipality of Chongqing in the southwest of the country, killing at least 16 people.