Eight bodies were recovered from the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Guiyang, Guizhou province, but eight people were still missing, an official with the fire department said on Thursday.

Fire official Li Shiyong said he was hopeful that the missing people could still be alive.

"Within the first 72 hours after a building collapse, there is still chance that missing people are alive," Li said.

Zhou Liming, whose sister-in-law lived on the ninth floor of the building and was still missing, said that the rescue process was too slow.

"It has been more than 24 hours and there is still no news of my sister-in-law," he said. "We will wait at the scene until she is found."

Li said the rescue operation process will last as long as two more days, saying that digging through the rubble is difficult. Rescuers are combing the debris with sniffer dogs and life detectors to find the missing people.

"Hopefully, the rescue will be finished by tomorrow or the day after tomorrow," he said.

The accident happened at around 11:30 am on Wednesday, when the nine-story apartment building in central Guiyang that housed 114 people collapsed. A total of 98 were confirmed safe by Wednesday evening.

After the collapse, residents of nearby buildings were evacuated.

Wu Yongkang, deputy head of Yunyan district, said the district had evacuated 864 residents from four nearby buildings. Each family gets a 200 yuan ($32) subsidy every day. These residents will either be living with relatives or in hotels.

"We have arranged more than 160 rooms in seven hotels to house the residents. We have also granted a 10,000-yuan subsidy to each family in the collapsed building," Wu said.

A landslide triggered by heavy rain in Southwest China in the past few days is thought to have caused the collapse, according to Tian Shuo, an engineering expert who inspected the scene and viewed surveillance video footage.

"The collapsed building stood near a slope, and a landslide pushed the middle and lower floors of the building forward, causing the upper floors to collapse," he said.

Yan Yiqi in Hangzhou contributed to this story.

yangjun@chinadaily.com.cn