In China it is partially collapsed a railway bridge under construction on the yellow river: the accident occurred around 03:00 in the morning (local time, 9 pm in Italy on August 22) and caused the death of 12 workerswhile 4 are still missing. The infrastructure, which is located in the province north-western of Qinghaiwas about to be completed and should have been part of the Sichuan-Qinghai railway line, which will connect the Tibetan plateau with the Chinese high speed.
The infrastructure has been under construction since November 2024: once completed, it will be the Arco railway bridge I continue with double track largest in the worldas well as the first railway bridge of this type to cross the yellow river.
In a video published by the CCTV state station, you can see the central part of the arch of the bridge while yield Suddenly, falling into the yellow river: according to local media, 91 rescue vehicles, 27 boats, 1 helicopter and 800 rescuers would intervene on the site.
The government has started an investigation to establish the causes of the accident: the information available is still scarce, but according to the local press agency Xinhua the collapse It would be to be attributed to the rupture of a steel cablewhich would have caused the steel beam to collapse 108 meters. Specifically, the project involves the construction of a Arco structure (which allows you to transfer part of the weight and loads to horizontal forces, contrasted by the feet of both sides) in steel, with two support towers about 100 meters high and the weight of 1,800 tons each.
The project should have been completed by August 2025: according to what reported by the Qinghai Development and Reform Commission, since the beginning of the works they had been made 39 segments of the arch and at the time of the accident the workers were positioning the suspension cables. Once concluded, the structure will be approximately long 1.6 kilometers and high 55 meters.
Incident of this type, in reality, they are quite common in China: in early August a similar episode took place in the northwestern region of the Xinjiang, where a suspension bridge He sold causing 5 victims and 24 injured. Also in this case, the causes were to be attributed to the breakdown of a cable, which caused the lateral collapse of the bridge.
