On Oct 30, 2015, at Beiwudu Town, Wuyang County, Luohe City, Henan Province, a house under construction collapsed and caused heavy casualties. The Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has attached great importance to this accident, and at evening of 30, the Minister, Chen Zhenggao and vice-Minister, Yiju decided to set up a special working group to the site for investigation and provided guidance to local departments for rescue and follow-up works.

       To learn lessons from the accident and prevent similar ones, the General Office of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued Emergency Notice on Strengthening Work Safety in Housing and Urban-Rural Development in response to instructions made by the State Council on Oct 31, 2015, which requires various departments of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction and related institutions strictly implementing the work safety responsibility system, strengthening safety management in construction and housing use to ensure city safety.
       Particularly, all levels of government shall strengthen rural housing construction management in accordance with dependency administration calls, attaching importance to management of rural housing construction, rural housing safety and dilapidated housing rehabilitation, perfecting supervision mechanism for rural housing construction, immediately arranging investigation and regulation on quality and safety of rural housing works in progress.

 In process of rural dilapidated housing rehabilitation, local departments at all levels, especially competent departments at county level shall organize technical force to reinforce safety patrol, guidance and supervision of the quality and safety of the site, to provide technical guidance on key construction stage, and to notify owner of the houses under construction in case of any hazard, urging them to take measures timely to eliminate all kinds of potential safety hazards and prevent safety accidents effectively.