A newly opened bridge in South-West China collapsed on Tuesday, sending slabs of concrete and a plume of dust down the mountainside and water below. No casualties were reported.
Videos of the partial collapse of the Hongqi Bridge, in the mountainous Sichuan province, have been widely shared on Chinese Social Media. Authorities closed the 758-Meter-Long Bridge on Monday after cracks appeared on nearby roads. A landslide on Tuesday caused part of the bridge to collapse completely.
The bridge is part of a national link between Sichuan and Tibet, which runs through an active part of China. The highway runs through the area devastated by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed nearly 70,000 people.
Construction of the Hongqi Bridge was completed earlier this year, according to a social media post by contractors Sichuan Road and Bridge Group.
In recent decades, China has followed a construction boom in the country’s most mountainous areas, connecting cities and villages that once traveled between. In September, China opened the world’s longest bridge in the neighboring province of Guizhou.