The death toll from a hotel collapse in eastern China has risen to eight and nine people are missing, officials said Tuesday morning after intensive relief efforts.
The play took place on Monday afternoon in Suzhou, a major tourist and historic city about 80 km west of Shanghai.
A total of 14 people have been thrown from the rubble since the disaster – eight of them dead and five injured, according to a report released by the townhall social networking site Weibo.
Nine people are missing and “rescue teams are fully mobilized to find them,” the source said. An earlier estimate put one death and 10 people still trapped.
Public television CCTV aired footage of the rescuers in orange gear and helmets on Tuesday, removing small debris from the rubble and under a metal structure.
The town hall said rescue troops were mobilized overnight with the help of 120 vehicles, construction machinery, dogs, cutters or stock inventors.
According to its description on the tourist reservation site Ctrip, the intermediate CG Kyuan Hotel opened in 2018 and includes 54 rooms and a banquet hall.
Suzhou has a population of about 12 million. It is named for its classical gardens and its canals, sometimes nicknamed the “Venice of the Orient”.
The building will collapse in China. Most subsequent investigations show that construction standards are not complied with.
In March 2020, a hotel claimed as an isolated site against the COVID-19 epidemic collapsed in the coastal city of Guangzhou, killing 29 people.
The previous year, a dozen people had died when a renovated commercial building collapsed in Shanghai.
In 2016, at least 20 people were killed when several apartment buildings in Wenzhou collapsed.
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