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Pictured: Search site

On July 26, Shaanxi Provincial Party Secretary Zhao Yide and Governor Zhao Gang went to the Provincial Emergency Command Center to coordinate the rescue and disposal of the collapsed highway bridge on the Shuiyang section of the Daning Expressway, and further deployed the search for missing persons and flood prevention and disaster relief work throughout the province.

Zhao Yide and Zhao Gang made a video call to the front headquarters of the Provincial Fire Rescue Corps and the Yaoping Reservoir site to inspect the obstacle removal and salvage operations, have in-depth exchanges with front-line rescue personnel, learn in detail about the outstanding difficulties in the current work, and study the next step of search and rescue work. Zhao Yide and Zhao Gang emphasized that the on-site command center should further strengthen consultation, analysis and judgment, coordinate forces and resources, dynamically adjust and extend the search key areas. It is necessary to speed up the progress of Yaoping Reservoir obstacle removal and create good conditions for the search work. It is necessary to strengthen the investment of professional forces, make good use of professional teams such as diving rescue, professional equipment such as floating clearing boats, and professional methods such as sonar detection, carry out three-dimensional and dragnet-style inspections, achieve efficient coordination on the water and underwater, joint efforts in the air and on the ground, and integrated coverage of the river bank, and make every effort to search for the missing persons. It is necessary to ensure the safety and logistics of the emergency rescue team, strengthen health and epidemic prevention and traffic diversion at the search site, and strictly prevent secondary disasters. It is necessary to continue to carry out the aftermath work with heart and emotion.

Zhao Yide and Zhao Gang stressed that all departments at all levels in the province should earnestly implement the deployment requirements of the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on July 25, always tighten the string of flood prevention and disaster relief, always put the safety of people's lives first, strengthen the linkage of early warning and emergency response, highlight the key defense of weak embankment sections, dangerous sections, and dangerous reservoirs, and decisively evacuate people in dangerous areas in advance. Leading cadres at all levels should take the lead in command and strengthen coordination, and grassroots party organizations and the majority of party members and cadres should give full play to the role of fighting fortresses and vanguard models to form a strong joint force to win the tough battle of flood prevention and disaster relief.

Wang Haipeng, member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee and Secretary-General of the Provincial Party Committee, and responsible persons from relevant provincial departments participated in the video dispatch.

Source: Author: Shaanxi Release

Further reading

A survivor of the collapsed high-speed bridge in Shaanxi: I was the only one who opened the car window on the way home with my co-workers

It rained heavily for several days in Zhashui County, Shaanxi Province, under the Qinling Mountains. The rain on July 19 was particularly heavy, and some villages were flooded half a meter deep. At around 8:40 that night, a sudden rainstorm and mountain torrents occurred in Zhashui County, and a section of the No. 2 Bridge of Yanping Village on the Danning Expressway collapsed for about 40 meters.

Cars rushed down from the collapsed area one after another. In a 7-seater commercial vehicle, Mr. Zhong was the only one who opened the window next to him. After falling into the water, he was lucky to swim out and grabbed the garbage thrown by the villagers.The lifebuoy was pulled ashore. However, only a few people who fell into the water were rescued. Some people recognized their family’s damaged vehicles in the video, and some received the last WeChat message from their relatives saying “the bridge collapsed.”

Through comparison of the highway toll system, video surveillance and telephone verification, local government departments preliminarily determined that a total of 17 cars and 8 trucks fell into the river and were in distress.As of 15:00 on the 20th, seven vehicles and 12 victims had been found, and one person was rescued. There are still 18 vehicles and 31 people missing and are being searched for.Currently, technical experts from various parties have arrived at the disaster center, and the collection and confirmation of DNA samples of the victims is underway.

The window of the car next to the only rescued person was open

Yanping Village is right by the river, but people didn't notice the collapse of the highway bridge next to it at first. It was already dark, and the village was also suffering from the disaster.

On July 19, starting from the morning, the rainstorm warning signal issued by the Zhashui County Meteorological Observatory continued to escalate, indicating that many villages and towns were at risk of secondary disasters such as flash floods. As of July 20, the monthly rainfall in Zhashui County had reached 128.7 mm.

It was the first time for people who grew up in the village to see such heavy rain. The water level rose by five or six meters, and many roads and crops in Yanping Village were flooded. Villager Li Guang's mother heard that her neighbor's pig house had collapsed, so she went out to check and saw several cars falling off the highway not far away.

The accident occurred at K46+200 on the Shanyang direction of the Shuiyang section of the Danning Expressway. A 40-meter collapse occurred on the 366-meter-long No. 2 Bridge in Yanping Village. Soon, some villagers heard a cry for help from the riverside and began to search along the shore with flashlights.

After seeing the notification in the village group, Li Guang and two childhood friends also rushed over. They took a rope and a life buoy from the village committee and tied it together and threw it to the location where the sound came from. The water was flowing fast, and the sound of it hitting the rocks on the shore was even louder. "The cry for help was therefore very weak." Li Guang said that they could only try to throw the life buoy many times based on their feelings, and finally found the drowning person 300 meters downstream of the No. 2 Bridge in Yanping Village, "lying on the rocks, holding on to branches."

They were about ten meters apart, across the slippery bank, Li Guang and others told the drowning man to tie the rope around his body, and then pulled him ashore little by little. After being rescued, he was trembling all over, and his clothes were torn, but fortunately, apart from a few scratches, he was not seriously injured.

The wife of the rescued Mr. Zhong told Deeper that her husband was on his way back home with his co-workers and planned to charter a car to Xi'an and then take a train. Mr. Zhong was sitting in the co-pilot seat of a 7-seater commercial vehicle. Because he wanted to smoke, he was the only one in the car who opened some windows. After falling into the water, the window next to Mr. Zhong broke, and he was able to swim out. After being rescued, he called his wife in shock: "I'm not dead, I'm still alive."

After rescuing the people, the villagers wanted to call the police, but the nearby communication signal was cut off. When the armed police and other rescue forces arrived, the villagers searched along the river to rescue the drowning people and vehicles. Many people did not sleep all night, but no new survivors were found.

After the collapse, the local government immediately organized the public security organs and the traffic control group and other social forces to investigate and confirm the information of the vehicles and drivers and passengers who fell off the bridge. It was initially confirmed that 25 vehicles fell off the bridge, with 43 drivers and passengers in the vehicles.

As of 3:00 p.m. on July 20, seven vehicles that fell into the river and 12 people were killed in the highway bridge collapse disaster in Zhashui, Shaanxi Province, and one person was rescued. There are still 18 vehicles and 31 people being searched. At present, technical experts at the ministry, provincial, municipal and county levels have arrived at the disaster center, and the collection and confirmation of DNA samples of the 12 victims are in full swing.

Vehicle wreckage found at the scene

"Saving one more car means saving one more family"

More than an hour before the accident, a driver drove across the No. 2 Bridge in Yanping Village. He described the scene to Shen Yi: it was raining heavily the whole way, visibility was poor, the water under the bridge was very fast, and there were many branches and white foam boards in the turbid water. He also noticed that a landslide had occurred next to the highway bridge.

A local said that the highway where the accident occurred connects Zhashui County and Shanyang County, which is relatively remote, and there are more vehicles only on holidays. The river under the highway bridge usually has a small flow of water. "The 50-meter-wide riverbed has only 7-8 meters of water, and the average water depth is less than half a meter." But this year, there has been a lot of rain. Before the accident, the local area had been raining for five or six consecutive days, and the water depth in some places of the river may exceed 10 meters.

During the heavy rain on the night of July 19, the Zhashui service area was packed with vehicles, and some people were stranded there for 10 hours. But some people chose to continue on their way. When a driver approached the accident site, he found a car driving in the opposite direction with its hazard lights on. After they stopped the car, they learned that a collapse had occurred in front of them, but when they called the police, several cars and trucks beside them were still moving forward.

At around 8pm that night, a man drove from Xi'an back to his hometown in Shangluo. At the last moment, he told his relatives on WeChat, "The bridge collapsed." After that, his uncle never contacted him again, and there was another person in the car.

After seeing the collapse accident on the news, his family called the police and rushed to Zhashui County to look for him. The uncle said that his nephew is currently on the missing list, and the two relatives who went to the scene have been arranged to stay in a hotel and wait for news.

Among the drowning victims was a family of four. The couple was in their 30s and worked hard in Xi'an. They had just picked up their child during the summer vacation and wanted to reunite with their family. Their neighbors told Deep Dive that the couple's bodies had been found, but there was no trace of their child.

After discovering that some vehicles had fallen into the water, the villagers of Yanping Village also wanted to save more people. Two of Li Guang's childhood friends climbed up a large slope near the village that was almost level with the highway where the accident occurred. They held flashlights and shouted desperately, hoping to stop the vehicles moving forward, but many cars did not notice and "just passed by and fell into the water."

Later, one of Li Guang's neighbors rolled onto the highway from one side and stood in the middle of the road to stop the cars. This time the effect was better, and quite a few cars were stopped. Some cars stopped and turned on their hazard lights, and some turned around and went back. "I definitely want to stop as many cars as possible. Saving one more car means saving one more family."

There are traces of landslides near the collapsed area. Photo/Professor Peng Weibing's team

Experts suggest installing early warning devices

We learned that before the bridge collapsed, Zhashui County had been affected by rainfall for several days. The river rose too fast, and a cordon was set up on the river bank. Police were on duty and people were not allowed to approach. Around July 19, water, electricity and communications in surrounding towns were also cut off. Some people used candles for lighting, and some lost contact with their families. Villagers commented on the news that the heavy rain destroyed the roads and they could not go to school. Children taking the high school entrance exam were notified to postpone their applications.

A village official from Zhongtai Village, located in the lower reaches of Jinqian River, told Deep Dive that on the evening of July 19, the provincial road passing through the village was severely damaged. The village closed the road to Yanping Village for safety reasons. "Part of the road was washed away by water and the road surface was suspended in the air."

The floods hit more than one place. That evening, the traffic police in Shaanxi released traffic information showing that there were seven sections of roads in Zhashui County that were under traffic control. Two national highways were interrupted by mudslides, three provincial highways and two county roads were destroyed by mudslides, including another bridge collapse.

According to previous reports by local media, the Shuiyang section of the Daning Expressway where the accident occurred starts from Shanyang County, Shangluo City in the east and ends in Zhashui County, Shangluo City in the west. It is 79 kilometers long, with bridges and tunnels accounting for 61.6% of the total length of the route. The estimated investment is 7.45 billion yuan. It is the first expressway project in Shaanxi Province to be built using the "province-city co-construction" model. Construction began in October 2015 and opened to traffic on December 19, 2018.

According to the Ministry of Emergency Management, the national comprehensive fire rescue team has currently deployed 736 people, 76 vehicles, 18 boats, and 32 drones to carry out rescue work. Rescue work is still ongoing. After the accident, Wang Xiangxi, Minister of the Ministry of Emergency Management, video-linked with the local emergency management department and fire rescue team to guide rescue and emergency response work, and led a working group to the scene on the morning of July 20.

In an interview with Deeper, Peng Weibing, an expert in bridge collapse accident analysis and a doctoral supervisor at the School of Civil Engineering at Zhejiang University of Technology, said that some bridges were damaged by water because the friction and collision of water flow caused the riverbed near the foundation to be eroded, causing the boundary of the bridge pier foundation to change or shift, further leading to the overall collapse. However, in this accident, the No. 2 Bridge in Yanping Village was built relatively recently, and from the on-site footage, it can be seen that only one bridge pier was damaged by the mountain torrent, so the possibility of the bridge collapse caused by erosion is relatively small.

In addition, in extreme flood disasters, floods generate large horizontal thrust and vertical buoyancy on the bridge superstructure, which may also cause bridge bearing sliding, shear failure, and overall sliding and overturning of the superstructure. Peng Weibing analyzed that in this accident, since the direction of the bridge was consistent with the direction of the river, the direction of the water flow pressure and the direction of the vehicle braking force were consistent. For bridges designed and constructed normally, the flow pressure will not cause damage to the bridge piers, and further inspections can be carried out when more information is disclosed.

Peng Weibing noticed that the No. 2 bridge in Yanping Village was close to the south bank. According to the aerial photography and online videos on the 20th, it can be observed that there were signs of landslides on the bank beside the bridge. He suspected that when the accident occurred, the height difference caused by the scouring of mountain torrents led to landslides and then damaged the pile foundation of the bridge pier, which further led to the collapse of the upper structure of the bridge.

Peng Weibing pointed out that the secondary accidents after the bridge collapsed were the main cause of casualties. According to the on-site situation, most vehicles did not fall immediately after the accident. It was difficult for drivers to notice the bridge collapse at high speed, and the failure to brake in time after the bridge collapsed was the main cause of casualties.

He suggested that for bridges at risk of collapse, bridge collapse warning devices should be installed if conditions permit, which would emit a sound or flashing warning signal immediately after the bridge collapses, or marker lights or continuous reflective strips should be installed on the bridge deck to facilitate drivers to identify abnormalities on the bridge deck in a timely manner and avoid secondary disasters.

(At the request of the interviewee, Li Guang is a pseudonym in this article)