BEIJING (AP) — A woman was rescued from the rubble of a building in central China on Sunday more than 50 hours after it collapsed, leaving dozens of people trapped or missing, state media said.
Separately, police arrested nine people, including the owner of the building, on suspicion of causing a serious accident, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Public broadcaster CCTV showed video of rescuers bringing the woman back on a stretcher around 4.30pm. Some could be heard shouting words of encouragement during the operation. She was taken to hospital and is in stable condition, CCTV said.
She was the sixth person rescued from the building, which collapsed on Friday afternoon in the inner city of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. About 20 other people remained trapped and 39 others had not been found by Saturday evening.
Besides the landlord, police said they arrested three people in charge of design and construction and five others for what they said was a false security assessment of a guest house located on the fourth to sixth floors. of the building.
In photos, the building appeared to have collapsed to around the second floor, leaving rubble strewn across the pavement. It was in a row of buildings about six stories high.
Xinhua said the building has eight floors, including a restaurant on the second floor, a cafe on the third floor and residences on the top two floors. Other media said it was a six-story building. Tenants made structural changes to the building, but the cause of the collapse remains under investigation, Xinhua said.
Police said the Hunan Xiangda Engineering Testing Co. released the fake safety report on April 13. Among those arrested were the company’s legal representative and four technicians suspected of providing the assessment.
Following an increase in the number of collapses of self-constructed buildings in recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Saturday that it was necessary to check these structures for any hidden dangers and repair them to avoid major accidents, he said. said Xinhua.
Poor adherence to safety standards, including the illegal addition of extra floors and failure to use rebar, is often blamed for such disasters.
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