Dozens of people are trapped or missing after a building collapsed in central China, officials said on Saturday, the second day of rescue operations. At least 23 people were trapped late Saturday while 39 others remained unreachable, the Changsha mayor told reporters.
The eight-story building (not six, as previously erroneously announced by authorities) collapsed in the city of Changsha on Friday afternoon. It housed a hotel, apartments and a cinema. So far no deaths have been announced.
Not so extraordinary disasters
City authorities said five people were rescued from the collapsed building overnight. Rescuers tried to make their way through the rubble. They used circular saws to free several survivors. State media showed firefighters cutting through a tangle of metal and concrete while rescuers shouted to communicate with survivors.
This type of disaster is quite common in China due to the poor compliance with safety regulations and the services that are supposed to ensure their proper application are somewhat lax.
In January, an explosion triggered by a suspected gas leak collapsed a building in the city of Chongqing, about 1,700 kilometers west of Shanghai, killing more than a dozen people. A gas pipeline explosion in a residential area in June 2021 killed 25 people in Hubei province (central).