(Central News Agency reporter Zhang Shuling, Beijing, April 2) An 8-story old house with illegal construction in Changsha, Hunan, collapsed suddenly on April 29. It is said that most of the trapped people were college students. The seventh person was rescued last night. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China requires all localities to learn from this lesson and conduct a comprehensive and thorough investigation of self-built commercial houses.
According to official reports, 23 people were trapped in the accident, 7 people have been rescued, and 39 people lost contact. The seventh rescued was rescued following being trapped for regarding 52 hours.
The collapsed building is located near the Changsha Medical College. In a petition circulated on the Internet, the parents involved in the accident counted the list of 36 college students who lost contact with them, and they demanded that the information on the rescue process be open and symmetrical.
According to China News Weekly, the collapsed building contained restaurants, private cinemas, hotels and more. According to online messages, some people were buying lunch at the time of the accident, while others were chatting with their friends using communication software, but they never replied, and only the other party kept sending text messages to confirm their safety.
China Youth Daily reported that a representative of the Changsha Municipal People’s Congress revealed that before the Spring Festival in 2021, he used a drone to take aerial photos of the accident site and found that the illegal buildings in the commercial street outside the campus of Changsha Medical College were randomly added, partitioned and dirty. question. Before the collapse, he had seen that there were still buildings under construction in the backstreet of Changsha Medical College.
On April 30, Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, instructed to search and rescue the trapped people at all costs and be held accountable in accordance with the law. On May 1, the Changsha public security organ placed nine people involved in criminal detention, including the person in charge of the design and construction, accusing them of being involved in the crime of major liability accident in the collapse.
CCTV reported that the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development held a video conference at the main venue in Changsha, Hunan Province on the 1st, asking all localities to earnestly learn the lessons of the collapse of Changsha residents’ self-built houses, and effectively prevent and curb the occurrence of major safety production accidents.
The meeting called for a comprehensive and thorough investigation, especially for self-constructed houses for business purposes and those that were not within the scope of the previous investigation and rectification of potential safety hazards in rural houses. For self-built commercial houses with serious safety hazards, they should immediately suspend business, and take effective control and rectification measures in a timely manner to resolutely prevent accidents such as collapse. (Editor: Cao Yufan) 1110502
