A road in Beijing has suffered its second land cave-in this year.
Officials were called to the Third Ring Road at Jingguang Bridge
on Sunday morning.
They discovered a drainpipe had leaked from an area southeast of
the bridge and caused a small cave-in. An area of about 50 metres
along the frontage of the ring road was flooded.
It was less than 100 metres away from the site of a major
cave-in on January 3, when a leaking sew caused a 20 metre-long, 10
metre- wide and 10 metre-deep hole and flooded one of the
construction sites of Beijing subway No 10 line. Traffic in the
area was affected for two weeks.
Police cordoned off the new area within 30 minutes of the leak
on Sunday and all related departments, including the tap water
company, the heating company, the landscaping administration and
the water authority, arrived to figure out the cause.
Water valves were turned off nearby, but the leak still did not
stop. The tap water company then used equipment to dig up the
ground and found the water was from broken pipes used to pump water
out of the tunnel underneath the road where the subway line is
under construction.
The pipes were built for the subway's construction and are not
part of the city's overall drain system, according to Yu Yaping,
chief of the publicity department of the Beijing Water Authority,
which takes care of the city's drain system.
"The cuts of the pipes looked neat, and it is likely that the
pipes were cut by some bulldozers or other machineries during the
construction of the subway.
Yu said Beijing's urban drain system remains sound in general,
as most of the facilities are less than 10 years old.
The accident did not affect the traffic seriously. Only one of
the pipes was found to be leaking.
The accident raises concern at the co-ordination in the
construction and management of the city's sophisticated underground
facilities, ranging from optical wires to gas pipes.
The reporter?approached the Beijing Construction Committee
and the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning and they
both declined to comment, claiming the accident on Sunday was not
their responsibility.
(China Daily February 28, 2006)