Photo: CFP

At around 7:20 pm Monday, an eighth person was rescued from the building collapse in Changsha, Central China's Hunan Province, after nearly 79 hours. The residential building collapse on Friday trapped 23 people, with 39 more believed to be missing.

Rescuers said that both legs of the eighth survivor, a girl, were buried in the debris, and amputation was initially planned for her rescue. But in order to help her to the greatest extent, rescuers spent several more hours and successfully pulled her from the ruins, the CCTV reported Monday.

Public security authorities detained nine people in connection with the incident on Sunday.

A trapped person, the seventh rescued since the accident, was pulled out on Sunday evening. It followed after a woman was rescued and sent to a hospital on Sunday afternoon, the Xinhua News Agency reported. 

The structure built by local residents covering a construction area of about 700 square meters, including a hotel, apartments and a cinema, caved in on Friday 12:24 in Changsha, local authorities confirmed.

After investigation, the owner of the building surnamed Wu, design and construction director surnamed Long and other two people have been arrested on suspicion of committing the crime of causing a major-liability accident, according to local police.

As investigation found that on April 13, an engineering testing company issued a faked security identification report, the company's legal representative surnamed Tan and four technical personnel have also been arrested on suspicion of providing false documents .

Police are conducting further enquiries.

On Sunday afternoon, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development held a video conference in Changsha, vowing to carry out a thorough investigation of commercial self-built buildings across the country, calling on local governments to earnestly learn lessons from this most recent building collapse, and effectively prevent and curb similar major work safety accidents.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the search for trapped and missing people to be conducted "at all cost", and a thorough investigation into the cause of the collapse.

Xi also requested a nationwide campaign to improve the safety of self-built dwellings and structures to prevent major accidents.

Global Times