Well Crap - another bridge down
This one is in China and it sounds like a big one.
From
Reuters:
China bridge collapse kills 20, toll set to rise
At least 20 people were killed when a road bridge being built across a river in southern China collapsed on to another highway, state media and a witness said on Tuesday.
At least 39 people were missing and witnesses said the death toll was likely to rise.
Twenty-two people were injured when the 320-metre (1,000-foot) concrete arc bridge spanning the Jiantuo river in Fenghuang county, Hunan province, collapsed on Monday during the evening rush hour, Xinhua news agency said.
Some 400 police had been sent to the scene to keep order, Xinhua said.
Pictures showed bulldozers and rescue workers picking through a massive pile of debris stretching between two hills at the banks of the river.
"I saw a lot of bodies lying on the road, some of them were construction workers, and some were passers-by ... blood was everywhere," Yang Shunzhong, a witness, told Reuters.
"A car was crushed flat under the bridge, it was so ruined that I could not even tell the size of the car," he said by telephone.
Police told Yang that they had found about 60 bodies, and more rescue workers were searching for the missing buried amid the ruins and in the river below.
Damn. My prayers to the families involved.
A bit more:
It was scheduled for completion at the end of this month.
If the bridge was scheduled for completion in 15 days, there were either some serious flaws with the design (not bloody likely - Chinese engineers are as good as any other engineers on this planet) or there was corruption leading to the use of sub-standard materials. Somebody accepted a load of sub-standard steel or concrete and pocketed a wad of cash.
One more:
The bridge's collapse came as state media reported that China would fix more than 6,000 damaged or dangerous bridges across the country. A bridge collapse in June in the southern province of Guangdong killed nine people.
An editorial in the China Daily warned that thousands of the country's bridges had been categorized as "unsafe."
And the death toll on the 35W/Minneapolis collapse is only eight (so far).
Posted by DaveH at August 13, 2007 9:33 PM