At least 10 people were killed in the collapse of a hotel used as a coronavirus quarantine facility in Quanzhou in China’s Fujian Province, authorities said yesterday.
Rescuers pulled 48 people from the rubble, of whom 38 are still alive, the Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management said on social media.
Most of the rescued were taken to hospitals for treatment, some with serious injuries, officials said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The building in the coastal city had been repurposed to house people who recently had contact with patients confirmed with COVID-19, the state-run People’s Daily reported.
The city has recorded 47 cases of the virus.
Video posted online by the ministry’s firefighting department showed rescuers helping children don surgical masks before pulling them from the wreckage of the six-story Xinjia hotel.
A 12-year-old boy told rescuers that his mother was still buried in the rubble.
“She was next to me just now,” he said in the video.
His mother was rescued alive hours later, the ministry said.
Another video released by the ministry showed rescuers squirting water from a bottle into the mouth of a trapped man.
Rescuers were also seen spraying disinfectant on each other between shifts.
Nine people escaped on their own, the ministry said.
Footage published by local media appears to show the hotel collapsing in seconds, with the building’s facade crumbling to the ground, exposing the structure’s steel frame.
Two retail spaces on the first floor had been undergoing renovation since before the Lunar New Year holiday, and construction workers called the hotel’s owner minutes before the collapse to report a deformed pillar, officials said.
Built in 2013, the building was converted to a 66-room hotel that opened in June 2018, Quanzhou authorities said.
The owner has been summoned by police while investigators work to determine whether the renovation or an original structural issue was at fault, the ministry said.
Fifty-eight people who had recently been in regions hard hit by COVID-19 were being quarantined in the hotel, but all had tested negative for the virus, the Quanzhou Evening News reported yesterday.
Additional reporting by AP
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