29 dead as all hotel collapse victims found

A family of five, with three children aged 2, 5 and 7, was enduring their final day of a 14-day quarantine in Xinjia Hotel when the building collapsed on Saturday in Fujian province's Quanzhou city.

In a video the mother uploaded earlier this month to Douyin, a popular video-sharing platform, the children are seen climbing over a couch near the window, occasionally looking out of it to see the streets.

They didn't manage to get out of the room alive. Neither did their parents.

When rescuers reached them on Wednesday, the family was all in one room. The father had a protective posture over his wife, while their daughter was seen under her mother's arms. Their two boys were nearby.

They were among 29 people killed in the sudden collapse at 7:15 pm on Saturday amid a renovation occurring on the building's ground floor. Mere minutes after a worker told the building's owner over the phone that a pillar had deformed, it crumbled, according to authorities.

The accident also injured 42.

After three hours of painstaking digging by firefighters, a man was miraculously pulled out alive on Tuesday afternoon after being buried for over 69 hours.

Thereafter, however, no more miracles occurred in efforts that involved over 1,100 rescuers. The last of the 71 trapped were pulled out of the debris dead at around 11 am on Thursday.

Of those trapped, 58 were under quarantine. The others included hotel staff and employees of businesses located on the ground floor of the building, according to local authorities.

Also on Thursday, the State Council, China's Cabinet, announced that it has set up a special investigation team to look into the accident. Fu Jianhua, vice-minister of Emergency Management, will head the team.

Work to clear the site is under way, the ministry said in a media release.

"Preliminary investigation shows that this is a workplace accident caused by human factors," Pei Wentian, an official with the ministry, told a news conference on Thursday.

Aside from violating the law during its construction, the hotel also breached renovation regulations multiple times, he said.

With 66 rooms, the hotel went into operation in 2018. It was designated as a quarantine facility after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, according to local authorities.

Pei noted that relevant local authorities are also to blame for the accident as they failed to fulfill their supervisory responsibilities, which left safety hazards in place for an extended period of time.

Those found responsible for the accident will be held accountable according to the law, he said.

Hong Ziqiang, executive vice-mayor of Quanzhou, said people found responsible for the accident in a preliminary investigation have been brought under control and their assets have been frozen.

The local government will make all-out efforts to cooperate with investigations from higher authorities and not a single procedure in the hotel's construction and renovation and its designation as a quarantine facility will be missed in the investigation, he told a news conference on Wednesday.

"There will be zero tolerance for any violations and dereliction of duties. No lenience will be given to institutes and individuals related to these problems, including public servants," he said.