A BUILDING collapsed onto the building next to it when it was being demolished by a construction team in Futian District on Monday. No one was hurt in the accident.
All the people living in the neighboring No. 125 Building in Gangxia Village, escaped unscathed, Shenzhen Evening News reported.
The accident occurred when the team was demolishing an eight-story building in the village at about 6 p.m. The building started to shake when two workers were demolishing it with a bulldozer, causing it to collapse slowly onto the No. 125 Building. We tried to seize the workers, but they ran away. Luckily the process was slow, so many people in the No. 125 Building could escape immediately, a resident surnamed Huang said.
An official of the project contractor, identified as Hu Weiming, said they had not discovered any misconduct in the accident yet. It was not the first time similar situations have arisen in demolishing houses in urban villages as they are often too close together. Before we started working, the neighboring buildings had been checked three times by us, the village management committee and the subdistrict office and we found nobody living in those building. It will not be our responsibility if they returned to the buildings without notifying anyone, Hu said.
In another development, another building was inadvertently pulled down when the same project construction team was removing dirt and construction waste Tuesday. Nobody was injured. It was a dilapidated building and had been affecting our construction for a long time, Hu said.
The owner of the building, who did not sign a contract with the team for demolition, accused the construction team of forced demolition.
We are willing to sit down and discuss compensation packages with the owner, Hu said.
(Wang Yuanyuan)
