At least 20 people were buried alive and four people confirmed dead after houses collapsed in east China's Wenzhou City on Monday, the state media reported.
Four buildings crumbled down at 4 am in Wenzhou's Lucheng industrial district in the eastern Zhejiang province. Rescue teams were immediately deployed to the disaster site and they started digging out survivors from the rubbles. Photographs from the scene show rescue workers in orange suits moving through mountains of debris.
China's Xinhua news agency said in a social media post that an "initial estimate" was that more than 20 people had been buried. The Lucheng government said that they are investigating the cause of the collapse.
Building collapses are nothing new in China. Several buildings have collapsed in the country in recent years. People blame low-quality construction works for the mishaps.
In April, two people were killed and 24 injured after a wholesale market building in Foshan city collapsed during a storm. In the same month, relief workers rescued a 22-year-old woman and her child from the rubble of a three-story building that collapsed in Shanghai.
Last year, several people went missing after 22 buildings at an industrial park in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen collapsed during a landslide. However, no casualties were reported.
