|
BEIJING: A bridge under construction in central China collapsed into
a river just before it was to be put into use, killing at least 22
people with 46 missing, authorities said on Tuesday.
The 268-meter (885-foot) bridge over Tuo River
in Hunan province crumbled while workers were removing steel
scaffolding erected during the construction process, the State
Administration of Work Safety said.
By Tuesday morning, the death toll from
Monday’s accident was 22, with 46 missing and 22 injured, the
administration said in a statement posted on its website.
Fifty-six workers were on top of the bridge when
it collapsed, while many others were underneath the structure, it
said.
Pictures of the disaster on Chinese news
websites showed a long stretch of concrete chunks that had crumbled
into the shallow river in Fenghuang county.
“It was unbelievable,” one resident
identified only by his surname, Jiang, was quoted as saying by a
local newspaper.
“There were people crying everywhere and
hundreds of people were trying to help the rescue effort,” he
said.
The work safety administration gave no reason
for the collapse, but said senior officials had rushed to the area
to oversee rescue and investigation efforts.
Fenghuang is a hilly area popular with Chinese
tourists due to its scenery and numerous examples of ancient
architecture.
The collapse came as the government announced
plans to fix or rebuild more than 6,000 damaged or shoddily
constructed bridges across the country by 2010.
The Ministry of Communications said on Monday
that many bridges had been hastily built, leading to structural
problems, amid an ongoing development rush in booming China,
according to a report in the China Daily on Tuesday.
“If left unrepaired, these bridges may crumble
at any time, wreaking economic havoc and possibly claiming human
lives,” the paper said in an editorial to accompany the report.
In an earlier high-profile accident, a cargo
vessel struck a 1,600-meter bridge on June 15 in southern China’s
Guangdong province, killing nine.
That disaster “once again sparked public
concern over bridge and waterway safety,” the editorial said.
“Safety measures should be fully taken into
account when building new bridges, with attention being paid to
adding more supports to reduce the risk of collapse.”
The disaster in China echoes the collapse of an
eight-lane bridge August 1 into the Mississippi river in the US
state of Minnesota. So far eight deaths have been confirmed from
that, with four people still missing.
That drew calls for a major overhaul of aging US
transport infrastructure, which experts said would cost billions of
dollars.
--AFP
|
