Three people died and one was injured in the collapse of a gym in China’s northeastern province of Heilongjiang on Monday and the club’s boss has been detained, according to a local government report on Tuesday morning.
The cause of the accident, which occurred at 7.20pm on Monday, was still under investigation, the Huanan county government stated on its WeChat account. A local official was quoted in mainland media reports as saying the collapse was linked to heavy snowfall.
The rescue operation ended at 12.35am on Tuesday, according to the Huanan notice.
Three of the seven people at the scene had escaped the accident, it said. State broadcaster CCTV said the collapsed area was a basketball gym.
On Monday afternoon, authorities in Huanan issued a red alert for snowstorms – the highest in China’s four-tier warning system – and urged local businesses to close “if necessary”. Chongqing-based Upstream News reported that the gym was open on Monday.
Mourning and anger mount in aftermath of Chinese school roof collapse
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Video circulating on social media showed part of the building’s roof collapsing on Monday night with the ruins covered in snow.
A press release on the Huanan government website said Huanan county mayor Cheng Xianfeng had visited the gym that collapsed on Monday in July as part of official inspections in the wake of the Qiqihar accident.
China’s National Meteorological Centre issued its first snowstorm warning of the year on Saturday. It forecast that several provinces in the northeast would be hit by heavy snowstorms from Sunday to Tuesday, with some areas expecting record snow.
Several cities in Heilongjiang province announced work and school closures on Monday.
Huanan county, home to nearly 270,000 people and part of the city of Jiamusi, is 1,350km (838 miles) northeast of China’s capital Beijing and 250km west (155 miles) west of the China-Russia border.
Snow continued to fall in Huanan on Tuesday morning.
