Posted on 02/01/2013 10:03:23 AM PST by Pan_Yan
HONG KONG — A truck laden with fireworks exploded on an elevated expressway in central China on Friday, unleashing a blast that threw vehicles 30 yards to the ground below and killing at least nine people, state news reports said.
The truck was on an expressway near Sanmenxia in Henan Province in morning fog when the truck erupted, causing an 87-yard section of the Yichang Bridge to collapse, according to the Web site of Dahe Daily, a newspaper in Henan, which quoted rescue officials at the site. Earlier, officials had raised the possibility that a bridge collapse set off the explosion.
Fireworks are a tradition of China’s traditional Lunar New Year celebrations, which begin on Feb. 9, and the explosion was a reminder of the dangers brought by the crush of people and goods on the move before the holiday.
China Central Television reported that one eyewitness injured in the accident said that because of an earlier accident before the explosion, traffic had been snarled on the expressway and a number of vehicles had crashed into one another.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This thread is uninteresting without video.
One of my favorite "Are you serious?!" moments in China came in 2005 when we were visiting Renmin University (one of the top second-tier schools in Beijing... Tsinghua and Beijing Universities are the top dogs). They were erecting a new 15-story building, for the Engineering and/or Law Schools, if memory serves. The building was nearly complete, and mere weeks away from the opening... and yet bricks from the facing, all the way up at the 14th and 15th floors, were coming out and falling to the sidewalk below, right in front of the main entrance. I have no idea how long, or if at all, this delayed the opening of the building.
China controls a lot of things, but fireworks is not one of them.
Was in a smaller Chinese city once during the Lunar New Year - and the sounds were that of a war zone. Fireworks could be had everywhere - was great fun, actually.
Amazing the misinformation on this clip. People at the scene say deaths into the 20’s but the state run news agency said 5 people have died.
Did anyone say “Hold my baijiu and watch THIS” before it happened?
They don't do a lot of things to our standards there.
I am certainly no construction engineer but in viewing the video of the scene that Hillary’s Gate Cult posted above, it appears that the use of re-bar in the concrete construction was really skimped upon (around the 1:55 mark in the video) Others more knowledgeable should comment on this though.
Unlikely that the truck load of fireworks would all together or mostly explode simultaneously ?
Do the Chinese use H.E. for their fireworks?
If you want to move something big and heavy with explosives it needs to be backed with earth or sand bags....or use massive amounts of HE.
This story has a lot of 0bama in it.
The truck blew up and the bridge went down but not in that order.
The Chinese are quite involved in building the new Bay Bridge in San Francisco, I believe. Anybody want to be in the first car to cross when it opens?
Hold ma beer and watch this!
This must be the new high performance fireworks they’ve been developing. 1-kiloton aerial bombs using high velocity explosives, maximum burst altitude 10 miles.
I might take a run at it in a Smart Car but I don't want to drive the first overloaded semi across. On the other hand I'd rather die in an overloaded semi than a Smart Car.
Did anyone else notice the phenomenal air pollution shown in that video?
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