A little girl protected by the embrace of her dead parents was the last survivor pulled out of the rubble of collapsed multistory buildings in China, reports said yesterday.
She was found deep in the debris of four six-story residential buildings more than 12 hours after they crumbled in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, killing at least 22 people, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Three-year-old Wu Ningxi (武凝汐) survived with only minor injuries thanks to the protection offered by the bodies of her mother and father, CCTV reported.
Photo: AFP
“We first found a young man. Then his wife and daughter were found as we were clearing the rubble,’’ a firefighter told CCTV. “We found them tangled together, with mother and father facing down and the little girl between their bodies facing up,”
The family had been buried alive in their living room.
Photographs showed hard-hatted rescuers lifting the girl’s half-naked body from the mess of cement and fallen bricks late on Monday, her hair matted with dust as they carried her out and gingerly placed her onto a stretcher.
The search through the three-story-high debris concluded early yesterday, the Lucheng district government said at a news conference, with 22 confirmed dead and only five survivors other than Wu.
The cause of the disaster was under investigation, CCTV said.
Reports said the four buildings were built in the 1970s by their farmer owners and were in a highly degraded state. Extra floors had been added over the years, making them between three and five stories high and further weakening their structures.
Recent heavy rainfall combined with the poor quality of construction and age of the buildings, built by the villagers themselves, were probable contributing factors, it cited a preliminary analysis as saying.
Neighboring buildings also constructed in the 1970s were being demolished to prevent further collapses, Xinhua news agency said.
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