All construction sites in Hubei province have suspended operations for safety checks after 19 painters died on Thursday from an elevator's 100-meter fall to the ground in Wuhan, the provincial capital.

The Department of Housing and the Urban-Rural Construction Department of Hubei province issued the announcement Thursday night, saying that safety checks on all construction projects must be completed by Sept 25.

The 19 victims had gone up the elevator outside the residential building under construction at about 1 pm on Thursday as usual in Donghujingyuan, a real estate project of Wuhan.

But something on the elevator went wrong, as it quickly went to the top, 34th floor, and then plummeted to the ground because steel cables broke. During the free fall, six workers, including two women, were thrown off. None of the workers survived, according to a Beijing News report on Friday.

An initial investigation found that the elevator's service life had been scheduled to end on June 23.

However, the elevator was not overloaded as media reported earlier, Xu Ke, director of the work safety technology department under the Hubei Provincial Administration of Work Safety, and also one of the investigation team members, told China Central Television on Friday. "The elevator was able to carry 20 passengers," Xu said.

The investigation team, which includes officials from safety supervision departments, was sent to the site to collect evidence.

"It's clear that the problems lie in the management, since the elevator's operations were extended for more than three months after it was supposed to end its service life," said Mei Hua, a publicity official from the Wuhan government.

"However, the accident has many factors, including the actions of the construction company and of the management company of the elevator. It will take days to find out the people responsible for the accident," Mei said.

Most of the victims are local residents in their 30s, and included four couples. They were all painters and would have finished their jobs within weeks, their co-workers said. The victims didn't have any insurance, local media reported.

Phone calls to the construction company, Hubei Xianghe Construction Engineering Group Co Ltd, went unanswered on Friday. The company was established in 1992 and has won several awards, including for work safety.

The Thursday announcement of safety checks said that all operation of building lifting equipment should be suspended.

A thorough safety check on equipment will take place through Sept 25. Any construction site that is found to have safety problems will be closed immediately.

All three construction sites in districts that China Daily reporters visited on Friday had suspended operations.

No construction was taking place at a residential real estate project in the OCT Wuhan project, which is near the site where the workers died.

An official from the project who declined to be named confirmed that a thorough check had been scheduled for Friday afternoon and a special meeting on safety was to have taken place that night.

"It's totally a man-made accident, warning us a mistake in management may lead to a huge tragedy," he said.

The real estate project Lanjinglvzhou, also near a construction site and a construction site in Hankou district, also suspended operations on Friday. No workers were at the site.

The entrance guard of the construction site said the developer and builder decided to suspend operations for three days, and technicians will control elevators and life tower after that.

A similar accident happened in a construction site in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province, on Dec 27, 2008, when 18 people died.

Contact the writers at zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn and zhoulihua@chinadaily.com.cn

Tian Jingwen in Wuhan contributed to this story.