Death toll from bridge collapse in China rises to 38 as two dozen still missing

Twenty-four people are still missing from 19 July disaster

The death toll has risen to 38 from the partial collapse of a highway bridge in northwestern Shaanxi province two weeks ago, China‘s state broadcaster CCTV reported on Friday evening. The bridge failure on 19 July sent at least 25 vehicles into a fast-flowing river.

The report said 24 people were still missing. One person was saved after the collapse.

The area where the bridge on the Danning highway fell had experienced heavy rains in the preceding days.

Teams have searched miles downstream looking for victims. A photo released by the Xinhua news agency shortly after the incident showed a section of the bridge snapped and folded at almost a 90-degree angle into the rushing brown water below.

The river passes through a mountain valley and the waters are turbulent, the report said.

The collapse has raised questions about the safety of China’s road and bridge infrastructure, built rapidly in recent decades. A similar collapse in May in Guangdong province killed 36 people.

Rains intensified by climate change have caused a series of landslides and floods across Asia. In China this week, 48 deaths were attributed to Typhoon Gaemi, which had weakened to a tropical storm by the time it reached the inland, southern province of Hunan.

Sichuan’s hardest-hit Hanyuan county has seen both roads and communications infrastructure damaged or destroyed, complicating rescue efforts, and teams had been working since dawn to restore connectivity and clear debris from highways.

From record-breaking heatwaves to unprecedented rainfall, China has been facing increasing numbers of extreme weather events in recent years, testing the country’s ability to cope with the impact of the climate crisis.

Recently, nine months worth of rain pounded a small town in Henan in one day. Officials recorded 606mm of rain in Dafengying in 24 hours, the most anywhere in China, according to national weather forecasters. That compares with the average annual rainfall of 800mm in the area.

Changing rainfall patterns are coinciding with a dramatic decline in the country’s economic expansion, which in past decades has seen China build a huge network of motorways, high-speed railways and airports across even the country’s most remote districts.

There is speculation that the economic slowdown has led officials and industries to cut corners to try and continue expanding this network, leading to a proliferation of poor-quality infrastructure and poor safety supervision.