An expressway flyover bridge in China’s central Hubei province collapsed and fell onto traffic passing below the bridge on Saturday killing four people and injuring eight others, China’s state-run Global Times reported Sunday.
“The accident took place on Saturday afternoon when a 500-meter-long ramp overpass tilted to one side at nearly 90 degrees, crushing one car, which ran along the expressway under the bridge,” the newspaper detailed. “Three trucks — belonging to the same transport team based in North China’s Tianjin Municipality — moving in the same direction on the bridge fell off.”
The incident resulted in the deaths of four people and the injuries of eight others according to initial reports by both Xinhua, China’s official state-run press agency, and the Global Times on December 19. Xinhua released an additional report later on December 19 stating the accident killed three people and injured four others.
The bridge in question connects China’s Shanghai-Chongqing expressway and Daqing-Guangzhou expressway. The concrete structure had a limited load capacity and was supported by one single-column pier.
Song Jianjun, a director of the Hubei Edong Yangtze River Bridge Corp., told the Global Times on December 19 he believes “a serious overloading problem” likely caused the accident.
“One of the fallen trucks weighs 198 tons, which is nearly four times the bridge’s maximum weight of 49 tons,” Song revealed.
“The bridge had only one single-column pier,” Li Faxiong, a researcher at the Research Institute of Highways at China’s Ministry of Transport, told the Global Times on Sunday.
“[S]uch a type of bridge is very prone to collapse, especially when many vehicles are moving on the same side,” according to Li.
China’s transportation ministry is attempting to blame the tragedy on the Tianjin Municipality transport team whose trucks were traveling on the bridge on Saturday when it collapsed. The ministry claims the trucks failed to exit the expressway before reaching the poorly built bridge as they were allegedly expected to according to Chinese transport regulations.
“The truck clearly broke the regulations, for it didn’t leave the highway at the toll station it was supposed to,” Li claimed on December 19.
“The tilt of the overpass doesn’t mean that its design or construction didn’t meet the standards or regulations, but it indicates that the weight of the 198-ton truck surpassed its safety redundancy,” the Chinese transportation official alleged.
“Overloading and speeding have been found to be the causes of many accidents [across China], including bridge and road collapses and car accidents, in recent years,” the Global Times acknowledged on December 19.
“For example, a viaduct in Wuxi, East China’s Jiangsu Province, collapsed in October 2019, killing three people,” the newspaper recalled.
In an echo of Saturday’s flyover collapse, Wuxi transport officials also blamed the 2019 accident on “a heavily overloaded truck” that was allegedly traveling along the bridge at the time it gave way.
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