Award-winning bridge sinking
- Source: Global Times
- [01:32 July 21 2010]
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By Fu Wen
A bridge that won an award for excellent construction after it opened 10 years ago in Changshan, East China's Zhejiang Province, is already falling apart, without any officials being held accountable.
The sinking bridge has aroused public fears as severe floods keep hitting large areas of South China.
The Changfeng Bridge in Changshan was designed and built in 1999 at a cost of more than 10 million yuan ($1.47 million). The bridge officially opened in 2000, and one year later received an award for excellent construction by the provincial traffic authority, Xinhua Insight reported on Monday.
No severe flooding has occurred under the bridge during the past decade, but foot-long cracks began appearing on the bridge deck in April, and one of the support pilings began to sink. Traffic was blocked off, creating massive transportation delays on a bridge used by 15,000 cars a day.
"I noticed cracks on the bridge first around 11 am and it expanded from several centimeters to a foot long in very short time," Fan Rijian, a local villager who lives next to the bridge, told Xinhua Insight.
"I used to drive pass the bridge all the time but now I have to make a detour through the old national highway," a local driver, surnamed Jiang, told the Global Times Tuesday. "The broken bridge delayed me at least 10 minutes on each of my trips."
The Changshan Traffic Bureau has expanded an old national highway as a detour.
Local authorities are fixing the bridge, replacing four out of the 10 pilings and repaving about 20 meters of the bridge. The traffic is expected to resume in October.
The cost of repair work and the economic losses resulting from the broken bridge have already hit 10 million yuan ($1.47 million), the report said.
"We've been busy directing traffic in the county since the accident occurred and nobody has been held accountable for the bridge problems yet", Wang Wei, deputy director of Changshan Traffic Bureau, told Xinhua Insight earlier.
Changshan traffic authorities could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Provincial traffic authorities said that if quality problems or design defects are found, relevant parties will be held accountable after the bridge is repaired, the report said.
The local traffic authority said the continuous impact of floods caused the bridge damage. However, faulty design of the bridge was also blamed for the sinking support piling. Authorities said the original construction team did not use advanced technology to build a solid foundation for the bridge back in 1999.
"The township was not that rich back then, so we chose a quicker and easier way to build the foundation of the bridge", said Ying Guoqiang, director of the former Qu-zhou Traffic Design Institution, which was responsible for the design of Changfeng Bridge.
