China — Earlier this Monday (Jul 12), a budget hotel in Suzhou collapsed and seventeen were found dead in the debris.
A search and rescue mission was carried out on Tuesday (Jul 13) to seek out survivors and was concluded on Wednesday (Jul 14).
According to local authorities, 23 people were retrieved from the site of the Siji Kaiyuan Hotel which is situated in eastern China. Out of the 23, only one was unscathed while five had to be sent to a hospital to be treated.
Firefighters, firetrucks, and search dogs were dispatched to look for survivors amidst the rubble of the three-floor hotel. Cranes, ladders, and metal cutters were utilized to facilitate the search.
Most of those who were found dead were hotel guests.
While it was initially believed that there were 18 people in the 54-room hotel when the collapse occurred, it was later discovered that there had been another five unregistered guests inside the hotel.
Over 600 people and 120 vehicles were involved in the search operation.
While the cause of the collapse is still unknown, investigations are currently still ongoing. The police are currently speaking with the hotel’s managers, legal representatives, as well as those who were involved in the construction and designing of the building. Some of them have since been put under “criminal control measures”, signalling that they were under supervision or detention of some sort.
Building collapses are not rare in China and are often caused by corruption or poor construction standards.
In Mar last year, a quarantined hotel located in southern China’s Quanzhou city collapsed and killed 29 people. Later on, authorities found that the hotel had gone through multiple renovations and illegally added three floors to the building’s structure when it initially only had four stories.
You Zi Xuan is an intern at The Independent SG. /TISG