A day of celebration quickly turned tragic after a restaurant filled with people attending an 80th-birthday breakfast banquet fell in on itself in China Saturday, 31 August.
Twenty-nine people died when the popular Juxian Restaurant collapsed in a village near the city of Linfen, Shanxi province at around 9.40am.
The man whose birthday it was survived because he was outside greeting guests, but his 78-year-old wife was among those who died, reports China Global Television Network (CGTN).
Fifty-seven people were pulled from the wreckage in a rescue operation that lasted until the early hours of Sunday.
- See drone footage of the disaster site:
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Local media said the building was constructed in the 1980s and had been renovated six times.
The Shanxi government has convened a team to investigate the cause of the collapse.
According to CGTN, the government will also check other buildings in the village for safety.
Image: A still from CGTN’s drone survey of the collapsed restaurant
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Reminds me of a tragic shopping mall collapse in Korea in the not too distant past. Sadly they’re a lot of places built with issues surrounding their strength and stability out that way – even in my wife’s country of Indonesia this isn’t uncommon, with several buildings having collapsed in similar or high-profile fashion over the last few years, even in Jakarta. Hopefully before too long, governments will start providing construction companies with far harsher penalties for poor construction, and hosts of events for failing to manage the risk presented by overcrowding venues. Breaks my heart to see 29 people dead in any situation, however, on these kind of occasions it is always so much worse to see that a time of joy has turned to a moment of mourning.