Posted on 08/13/2007 9:25:12 PM PDT by traumer
A bridge being built in central China has collapsed, killing at least 22 people, the authorities say.
The collapse occurred on Monday in Fenghuang county in Hunan province. Forty six people remain missing.
Reports say the bridge was nearing completion at the time of the collapse. An inquiry into the cause is under way.
The 320-metre (1,049ft) bridge was being built to span the Jiantuo River. Fenghuang is a hilly area popular with Chinese tourists.
The BBC's Quentin Somerville, in Shanghai, says more than 100 construction workers are believed to have been on the bridge when it collapsed.
They were in the process of removing scaffolding supports from the structure, which was supposed to open later this month.
The bridge was to link Fenghuang County with neighbouring Guizhou Airport.
According to local media sources, most of those working on it were local farmers who had been recruited for the project.
Rescue workers, including 400 soldiers, are continuing the search for survivors.
Of course its Bush’s fault. If he hadn’t sold out the US by benefiting Halliburton and his oil friends, China wouldn’t be doing so well and need all these new bridges for all those cars that cause global warming. When will you learn?
lol!!!!!!!!!!!!
You’re right. We’re making them wealthy too quickly, and they were probably using some engineering data from super computers handed over to them from the USA. It’s America’s fault, if not Mr. Bush’s.
BEIJING, China (AP) — A bridge under construction as a tourist attraction in central China collapsed Monday, killing at least 20 people and leaving 39 missing, state media reported.
art.jiantuo.ap.jpg
Rescuers search for victims at the site of a collapsed bridge in Fenghuang, China, Tuesday.
The official Xinhua News Agency said 64 people were rescued, including 22 who were injured when the 1,050-foot (324-meter) bridge spanning the Jiantuo River in Hunan province suddenly gave way. The cause of the collapse was under investigation, it said.
The bridge in Hunan’s Fenghuang county had four decorative stone arches and was designed to be a tourist attraction, Xinhua said. It was scheduled to open at the end of August.
News photos showed the bridge reduced to a tangle of stone, concrete and steel reinforcement bars.
Rescuers were searching for victims and the accident was under investigation, Xinhua and a local official said.
“We have sent teams to the site for rescue efforts. ... We have no idea about new updates because there is no mobile-phone reception around that area,” said Liao Junhui, an official with the administrative office of the Fenghuang county government. “We cannot reach anyone with the team.”
Xinhua reported that most of the people working on the bridge were local farmers who had been recruited to work on the project.
On June 15, a bridge in south China’s Guangdong province collapsed when a cargo vessel loaded with sand rammed into it, killing nine people. That bridge was built in 1988 and spanned the Xijiang River, a major tributary of the Pearl River.
Construction accidents in China are frequent, with contractors often opting for shoddy materials to cut costs and using migrant laborers with little or no safety training.
The Ministry of Communications categorized 6,300 of the country’s bridges as dangerous because of serious damage to their “structural components” in its annual report on road safety last year, the China Daily newspaper reported Tuesday.
The report didn’t give specifics but quoted Xiao Rucheng, secretary general of China’s Institute of Bridge and Structural Engineering, as saying many of the country’s new bridges were being built too quickly and were poorly designed.
The Chinese bridge accident came nearly two weeks after the collapse August 1 of a major interstate bridge in Minneapolis that killed nine people and left four others still missing. Authorities are trying to determine exactly what caused the nearly four-decade-old bridge to crumble.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/08/13/china.bridge.ap/index.html
“... what caused the nearly four-decade-old bridge to crumble.”
The timing is suspicious
I wonder how many catastrophies will happen in all the new building that is going on for the Olympics. I wish we would boycott the Olympics. What have they done for us lately. Everything they do is inferior. And they don’t care. Kill a few thousand people. Lighten the load a bit.
Its Bush's fault.
I know because my masters at Kos and the NY Times told me so.
They are spending all of their money on fighting the Tibetans and their infrastructure is crumbling.....
And they need to confiscate more than the meager 100% of their people’s wages to help improve their roads and bridges.
Rove ! Just because he can! /s
Thought this would be from scrappleface ...
What about the largest Hydro-electric dam in the world? (Three Rivers Gorge Dam?)
If that goes, no one will be around to film the video.
Oh yes I can. If Dems can blame Bush because a bridge that was operated and inspected by state officials collapsed, I guess I can blame Bush for the China collapse. Both arguments use the same amount of logic: none at all.
What about the largest Hydro-electric dam in the world? (Three Rivers Gorge Dam?)
If that goes, no one will be around to film the video.
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Oh come on now ,,, thats PERFECTLY safe ,,, I’m sure they’ve done all the correct load calculations and such , taking into account their typical cement quality and their steel chock full of impurities because they’re too cheap to run their furnaces a few hundred degrees hotter...
Nothing like this could ever happen in a Socialist Paradise. It must have been sabotage via the HAARP array, under the direct control of Bush and Rove.
Another Chinese bigwig will lose his life over this accident.
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