Inquiry launched into fatal collapse of overpass

A COMPREHENSIVE investigation into the collapse of a highway overpass in east China’s Jiangsu Province has begun, local authorities said over the weekend.

The investigation started on Friday, which covered the overloaded vehicles, the vehicles’ owner, their actual loads at the time of the accident, the cars beneath that were crushed, among others.

The collapse happened at around 6:10pm on Thursday, crushing three cars beneath it at the section of National Highway 312 in the city of Wuxi, killing three and injuring two others.

Five experts have joined the investigation, who have collected materials about the collapsed overpass and its neighboring two overpasses, and are conducting technical analysis to determine the cause of the collapse.

Preliminary investigation showed one of the trapped cars, which happened to be parked under the overpass, had nobody inside. The three people in the other two cars were killed.

There were also five other vehicles driving on the overpass when it collapsed. The vehicles including three sedans and two trucks were stopped by the guardrail on the overpass, leaving two injured.

The overloaded truck was carrying six steel coils, each weighing about 25 tons. The elevated road had a maximum weight limit of 40 tons.

Wuxi government said that while the truck driver is still in a coma, the owner of the truck, the owner of the transport company, Wuxi Chenggong Transport Group and the owner of the wharf where the coils were loaded, have all been detained.

Traffic on the road previously blocked by the debris of the fatal accident was restored on Saturday morning.

Open information showed the company had already been fined three times for allowing overload trucks to operate. An overloaded truck from the company once hit a biker who subsequently lost a limb.

Overloaded trucks are a common scene on the national highways.

(Xinhua/Shanghai Daily)