(TibetanReview.net, Aug03’24) – Mudslide disasters have hit two nearby places in a Tibetan area of what is now part of China’s Sichuan province over Aug 2-3, resulting in deaths and people missing, necessitating the dispatch of hundreds of people and equipment in rescue efforts.
The first incident occurred on Oct 2 night in Ridi village in the province’s Kangding City when “a sudden mountain torrent and landslide” destroyed homes, killing at least two people and leaving 12 missing, state broadcaster CCTV reported, quoting the Ganzi (Tibetan: Kardze) prefecture government. The disaster swept away part of the village.
The second disaster happened nearby at around 3.30am on Aug 3, when a sudden mountain flood and mudslide hit the Kangding-Luding section of the Yakang expressway, leading to the collapse of an expressway bridge between two tunnels.
Kangding (Dartsedo) is Tibet’s historical gateway to China while Luding (Chagzam) is within Tibet in Kardze prefecture.
The bridge disaster sent three vehicles carrying six passengers plunging down the mountainous terrain. One person was rescued while the remaining five were missing as of noon on Aug 3, state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the government publicity department of Sichuan Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
The Yakang expressway, connecting Ya’an in China in the east and Kangding in the west, opened in 2018. It shortens the car trip from provincial capital Chengdu to the resort city of Kangding by two hours, for a total journey of four hours. Bridges and tunnels make up 82% of the expressway.
While it remains to be determined whether poor quality of construction was responsible for the collapse of the Yakang expressway bridge, call for a crackdown on such projects have been growing recently in China.
“Three tragedies in a row! I was so shocked,” scmp.com Aug 3 quoted a user as writing on social media platform Weibo. “China should launch a crackdown on tofu-dreg projects.”
In Chinese, a “tofu-dreg project” is a phrase used to describe poorly constructed infrastructure. Such projects came under the microscope in 2008, when hundreds of students died in shoddily built school buildings during the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan.
The third tragedy referred to the death of 38 people from the Jul 19 partial collapse of a highway bridge that plunged 25 cars into a rushing river in Shannxi province.
China is the world’s largest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say drive climate change and make extreme weather more intense, noted the AFP Aug 3.