A recently opened 758-metre-long bridge in China’s southwestern Sichuan province collapsed on Tuesday, with no casualties reported.
The Hongqi bridge, located on a national highway linking the country’s heartland with Tibet, had only been completed earlier this year.
Safety concerns prompted the closure, as conditions on the mountainside worsened significantly by Tuesday afternoon.
Landslides triggered by the deteriorating conditions ultimately led to the collapse of the approach bridge and its roadbed.
I live in Florida, flattest state in the Union. We still have to have professional soil reports to build anything. The is 100% a construction failure.
They should have detected the likelihood of landslides, maybe dynamited the mountain to mitigate.
They suspect water seepage from a nearby reservoir is the culprit…
And deep soil sampling should have caught that. I’m sure there are many methods I’m ignorant of that could have foreseen this.
Even America’s crumbling infrastructure doesn’t see monstrous failures like this. China: Is it Wednesday again?
If you don’t think there are major American infrastructure failures, then it is simply your ignorance. The federal government thoroughly documents major structural failures and they never have a shortage of work.
A very approachable introduction to these disasters are the books and videos by Grady Hillhouse of Practical Engineering fame.