Bizarre incident, but quite common | Permalink

A few days ago I was told that a big chunk of the highway connecting two cities was desintegrated by a sudden flood, caused by heavy rains and poor urban planning.

The highway, which is about a few decades old, is set between hills, valleys and cliffs, and in one point over a sewage river, exposing the surrounding environment with contamination. The sewage river may have gotten high enough to losen the earth beneath the highway and break it apart. A hole, probably about 10 meters wide and 5 deep, was created, just before an old bridge, a small college (less than 10 meters away) and a brick-making factory.

Traffic between both cities was frozen for a day until they made a detour mere meters from the incident. Still, traffic has been reduced to about 50%. There are schools, commercial, residential and industrial sectors around the area, which may have caused temporary setbacks.

I went there a few days after the event and took some pictures. In the picture you can observe that there was are no remains of any wall to prevent the soil beneath the highway from being eroded by the sewage river near it. You can blame urban planning, go on. When the high way was designed, various decades ago, there was probably no idea of what could happen there in the future. What remains of the highway is almost nothing, just dirt and mud. Luckily, there has been no reports of any deceased or injured.

I guess this will take a while to repair, knowing how slow the transportation and communications bureau operates at this point of the century.