Chinese police have arrested at least nine people after a building collapsed in the central city of Changsha as rescue workers continue to search for survivors trapped in the rubble. Changsha police said Sunday that the building’s owner and three other people responsible for its design and construction were arrested on suspicion of “major responsibility for the accident”. Another five people, all members of a private building inspection company, “gave a false security report after conducting a building security check at the hotel,” the Twitter-like Weibo statement said. Seven people were pulled alive from the rubble of a six-storey building in central China’s Hunan Province, while another 16 people are believed to be trapped, according to authorities. The incident took place on Friday afternoon in the city of Changsha, when the construction that housed a hotel, apartments and a cinema collapsed. President Xi Jinping on Saturday called for an “all-out” investigation and ordered a thorough investigation into the causes of the collapse, state media reported.
Search “at any cost”
No cause for the disaster has yet been given by the authorities. The mayor of Changsha pledged to “seize the golden 72 hours of rescue and do the best we can to find the trapped people” in a news release on Saturday, adding that more than 700 first responders had been dispatched to the scene. The six-storey building in Changsha City partially collapsed on Friday [Cnsphoto via Reuters] State media showed firefighters, backed by an excavator, cutting a metal pit and concrete sheets, while rescuers shouted at the wreckage tower to contact any survivors. Crowds gathered as rescue chains removed pieces of bricks by hand, allowing experts to delve deeper into the wreckage. Some of the injured were rushed to garnishes, while scout dogs combed the area for further signs of life. A senior Communist Party official was sent to the scene – an indication of the seriousness of the disaster. Chinese Emergency Management Minister Huang Ming urged officials to “completely eliminate any hidden security risks” at a meeting Saturday. Building collapses are not uncommon in China, due to poor safety and construction standards as well as corruption among law enforcement officials. In January, an explosion caused by a suspected gas leak destroyed a building in Chongqing City, killing at least 16 people.
