About 10 people have died due to the collapse of Xinjia Hotel, that has been getting used as a facility for quarantine for coronavirus in Quanzhou, China. The hotel collapsed on March 3rd in the middle of the night.
About 1,000 firefighters attended the scene and helped to get all the victims out. According to squadron chief of the armed police detachment unit Quanzhou, Guo Yutuan, they used instruments to detect any signs of life. “We used life-detecting instruments to monitor life signs and professional burglary devices so they can break-in. We tried our best to save trapped people,” he stated.
Around 80 people were in the hotel on the night it collapsed, 9 managed to escaped and about 71 others were trapped. About 48 people have been pulled from the rubble and the remaining 23 are still unaccounted for.
Quanzhou is around 600 miles away from Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak. However, all of the guests of the hotel had previously tested negative for the virus.
The owner of the building has been arrested and authorities are now investigating the cause of the collapse. The investigation will focus on whether it was a structural failure or because of the renovation of the first floor that was completed last January. A hotel being used to quarantine people during the coronavirus outbreak has collapsed, with recent renovation suspected to have been the cause.
Source: CNN Indonesia
Image: Chinatopix
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