Three rescued from hotel rubble; bodies of two children recovered

Rescuers on Tuesday afternoon miraculously rescued a man who had been trapped for 68 hours under the rubble of a hotel that had collapsed in Quanzhou city, Fujian province.

A crowd of rescuers burst into applause when firefighters lifted the man from the rubble to the ambulance at about 4:30 pm.

In addition, rescuers had saved a mother and her son late Monday night who had been buried for 52 hours under the debris of the Xinjia Hotel.

However, on Tuesday they also found the bodies of two children, reported to be aged 2 and 4, in the wreckage.

Official data showed that by 5 pm on Tuesday, 44 people had been pulled alive out of the debris, along with 18 bodies. Two of the 44 later died of their injuries in hospital.

At the time of the collapse at 7:15 pm on Saturday, 71 people were trapped.

On Tuesday, more than 1,000 rescuers were still searching for nine people who remain missing.

"The biggest challenge now is to remove the wreckage over the trapped while avoiding further injuries to them after finding them," said Ye Zhiyong, a commander with the Fujian fire rescue team.

Despite the difficulties, Shang Yong, vice-minister of emergency management, urged rescuers to continue making all-out efforts.

"Never give up as long as there is still a gleam of hope," he said at a news conference on Tuesday in Beijing.

A preliminary probe has shown that illegal renovations in the building are to be blamed for the tragedy, Shang said. "This is a workplace accident caused by human factors," he said.

Construction of the building began in 2013. It was converted from a furniture store into a hotel in 2018 with 66 rooms and had more recently been designated as a medical observation facility in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Fifty-eight people were under quarantine at the time of the collapse.

Two of the rooms on the ground floor were under renovation when the collapse occurred. The building crumbled only about four minutes after a worker told its owner over the phone that a pillar had deformed, according to authorities.

The accident also revealed that local authorities had failed to fulfill their supervisory duties, and safety hazards were not rectified, Shang said. "The lesson paid with blood from the accident is astonishing," he said.