How a New Bridge Partly Collapsed in China’s Southwest

A newly built bridge in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan partly collapsed, causing slabs of concrete to plunge onto a rocky mountainside and sending up plumes of dust. No casualties were reported.

Video of the collapse of a section of the towering Shuangjiangkou Hongqi Bridge in the mountainous, seismically active part of China on Tuesday afternoon was shared widely on Chinese social media.

The bridge was part of a national highway that winds toward Tibet, traversing an area that was devastated by a 7.9-magnitude earthquake in 2008, which left more than 69,000 dead and thousands more missing.

The authorities in the city of Ma’erkang — or Barkham in Tibetan — and police and transportation bureaus in Aba Prefecture, which oversees the city, said that the bridge was closed after cracks appeared on the road and nearby slope on Monday. After a landslide on Tuesday, the bridge approach and roadbed collapsed, the city government said in a statement.

The government said that a detour was in place and that it could not predict how long it would take for the bridge to reopen.

Over the past several decades, China has spent heavily on infrastructure like highways, bridges and rail lines, much of it in mountainous areas. The surge in spending built a significant portion of the world’s tallest and longest bridges. It also left many local governments mired in debt.