Roof of school gym collapses in China, killing 11
The roof of a middle school gym collapsed yesterday at 3 p.m. local time in Qiqihar City, northeastern Heilongjiang Province. Most of the victims were students.
Eleven people were killed after the roof of a middle school gym collapsed yesterday at 3 p.m. local time in Qiqihar City, in northeastern Heilongjiang Province, state media reported. Most of the victims at the No. 34 Middle School in Longsha District were middle school students, since a girls’ volleyball team was reported to have been training at the time of the incident.
As of this morning, all 19 people at the gymnasium when the accident occurred have been accounted for, with four managing to escape, authorities said. The coach has been found alive and was reportedly heard calling out the students’ names while rescue teams were searching through the rubble.
“They tell me my daughter is gone, but we never got to see the child. All the children had their faces covered with mud and blood when they were sent to the hospital. I pleaded, ‘Please let me identify the child. What if that wasn’t my child?,’” a father said in a video that went viral on Chinese social media.
Construction staff have since been detained after a preliminary investigation found that they had illegally placed perlite — a very porous form of volcanic glass that can hold a large amount of water — on the roof of the gym for the construction of an adjacent building, Chinese state media Xinhua reported. Heavy rain had led the perlite to soak up water, resulting in the roof caving in.
