A woman was pulled alive from the wreckage of a building that collapsed four days ago in central China on Tuesday (May 3), state media reported, calling the rescue a "miracle."
On Tuesday, the search and rescue operation at the disaster site, which left a gaping hole in a dense streetscape, was still underway.
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According to the official Xinhua News Agency, a man and a woman were apprehended on Monday afternoon and early Tuesday morning.
The woman, who was rescued after being buried for 88 hours, signaled her presence to workers using life-detection systems by knocking on objects. According to Xinhua, she was conscious, had normal vital signs, and could communicate with her rescuers.
At 4:16 a.m., the ninth survivor has been rescued from the rubbles of a residential building that collapsed in Hunan Province. The female survivor has been taken to the hospital for treatment.
CCTV footage showed a person coated in a thick striped blanket being carried on a stretcher, the ninth person extracted from the rubble in four days.
"Waiting for more miracles," CCTV said on its official social media page.
According to the Communist Party's People's Daily, the woman was conscious and able to communicate with rescuers through a small hole before being rescued, and her "vital signs were stable."
The collapse of a commercial building in Changsha, Hunan province, which housed apartments, a hotel, and a cinema, prompted a massive rescue effort involving hundreds of emergency responders on Friday.
State media showed firefighters using heavy machinery to slash through mangled metal and concrete over the weekend.
At least 14 people were still known to be trapped under the rubble, and no contact had been made with 39 others.
Police detained nine people, along with the building owner, on suspicion of violating building codes or other offenses. Three people in charge of design and construction, as well as five others, were arrested for allegedly providing a false safety assessment for a guest house on the fourth to sixth floors of the building.
The structure also housed a residence, a cafe, and shops.
Following a rise in the number of self-built building collapses in recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Saturday that it was necessary to inspect such structures for hidden dangers and fix them to avoid major accidents, according to Xinhua.
Safety violations, such as the illegal addition of added floors and the failure to use reinforcing iron bars, are frequently blamed for such disasters.
