Panic in China: The moment one of the country’s tallest skyscrapers begins to shake and must be evacuated

One of the tallest skyscrapers in China He was evacuated on Tuesday after starting to shake, sending panicked buyers and employees rushing to safety in the southern city of Shenzhen.

SEG Plaza, nearly 300 meters high, began to inexplicably shake at around 1 p.m., which caused the evacuation of people inside as pedestrians watched with their mouths open from the outside streets.

The building was closed at 2:40 p.m., according to local media.

Completed in 2000, the tower houses a major electronics market and several offices in the center of one of China’s fastest growing cities.

Those responsible for emergency management investigate what made the tower wobble in the Futian district of Shenzhen, according to a post on the Weibo platform, similar to Twitter. “After checking and analyzing data from various earthquake monitoring stations across the city, there was no earthquake in Shenzhen today,” the statement said. “The cause of the tremor is being verified by various departments.”

It was not immediately clear how the authorities would deal with a dangerous building of its size in the heart of a city of more than 12 million inhabitants.

Videos of passers-by posted by local media on Weibo were shown the skyscraper trembled on its foundations as hundreds of terrified pedestrians ran outside. “SEG has been completely evacuated,” a Weibo user wrote in the caption of a video showing hundreds of people moving around a wide shopping street near the tower.

The tower is named after semiconductor and electronics maker Shenzhen Electronics Group, whose offices are located in the building.

It is the 18th tallest tower in Shenzhen, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s Skyscraper Database.

Chinese authorities last year banned the construction of skyscrapers over 500 meters in height, adding to height restrictions already in place in some cities such as Beijing.

The new guidelines for architects, planners and developers were aimed at “showcasing Chinese characteristics” and also banned sticky “imitative” buildings inspired by world monuments.

Five of the tallest skyscrapers in the world are in China, including the second tallest building in the world, the 632-meter Shanghai Tower.

Shenzhen is a sprawling metropolis located in southern China near Hong Kong with a thriving tech manufacturing sector. Many Chinese tech giants, such as Tencent and Huawei, have chosen the city as their headquarters. It is home to the world’s fourth tallest skyscraper, the Ping An Finance Center, at 599 meters.

Building collapses are not uncommon in China, where lax building regulations and rapid urbanization cause buildings to rise quickly.

Last May, a five-story quarantine hotel in the southeastern city of Quanzhou collapsed due to poor construction, killing 29 people.

The devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008 killed more than 69,000 people. The disaster sparked a storm of public controversy over poorly constructed school buildings – dubbed “tofu dregs” – which collapsed and killed thousands of students.

(With information from AFP)

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