Cruel blow
Four condemned collapse of housing complexes, killing 10 people in China.
BEIJING: Ten people were declared dead after four residential buildings in Wenzhou, East China’s Zhejiang province, collapsed early in the morning.
Rescuers are still verifying the number of people buried under debris.
The disaster happened around 4am yesterday in the Lucheng industrial district, located in central Wenzhou.
By yesterday evening, 13 people were rescued, but 10 of them were found dead.
A resident living in an opposite building told Beijing News that he “heard a big bang following the sudden shaking of the apartments”, and saw the buildings opposite his own had collapsed when he ran out.
The collapsed buildings were three to five stories tall and were built by the local residents themselves, according to a report by Beijing News.
Demolition of the buildings started two or three years ago, but somehow halted halfway, a local resident told Beijing News.
The houses were then later rented to migrant workers at relatively low prices, the man said.
China has seen several building collapses in recent years, with some of the incidents blamed on low quality construction.
On May 16, people were reported dead after a residential building in the southwestern province of Guizhou collapsed due to landslides.
In Aprile, two people were killed and 24 people were injured when a storm brought down a wholesale market building in Foshan city, in the southern province of Guangdong.