Public security officials detained nine people after a residential building collapsed in central China's Hunan Province on Friday.
Around 4:30 p.m., state broadcaster CCTV released clips of rescuers bringing a woman out on a stretcher. During the operation, some could be heard saying words of encouragement.
According to CCTV, she was taken to a hospital and is in stable condition. Another person was brought out alive in the evening, according to state media, but no details were provided.
Seven people were rescued from the collapsed building in the inland city of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, on Friday afternoon. About 20 others were still trapped, and another 39 were still missing as of late Saturday.
According to police in Changsha's provincial capital, the owner of the building, Wu, and three others in charge of building design and construction, Long, Ren, and Xue, were suspected of causing a major-liability accident.
Investigations also revealed that on Apr. 13, an engineering testing company issued a false house safety appraisal report to the building's guesthouse. Tan, the company's legal representative, and four technicians named Ning, Tang, Liu, and Gong were accused of providing false documents.
Another five people, all employees of a private building inspection firm, "provided a false safety report after conducting a building safety audit of the hotel," according to a statement on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
Building collapses are not uncommon in China, owing to lax safety and construction standards, as well as corruption among enforcement officials.
President Xi Jinping commanded a search "at any cost" and a full investigation into the cause of the crash on Saturday, according to the statement.
A leading Communist Party official was dispatched to the disaster site, indicating the gravity of the situation.
In a meeting on Saturday, China's emergency management minister, Huang Ming, encouraged officials to "thoroughly eliminate all kinds of hidden safety risks."
At a news conference on Saturday, Changsha's mayor promised to "seize the golden 72 hours for rescue and do our best to search for the trapped people," adding that over 700 first rescuers had been dispatched to the scene.
Firefighters, aided by a digger, were seen cutting through a morass of metal and sheets of concrete, while rescuers shouted into the debris tower to communicate with any survivors.
As rescuers in chains stripped away brick pieces by hand, a crowd gathered to get a better view of the wreckage.
While sniffer dogs continued to search for any signs of life, some of the injured were taken away on gurneys.
