THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
July 6, 2023 at 16:17 JST
SHIZUOKA—A 60-meter-long bridge girder weighing 140 tons fell from an expressway construction site here on July 6, killing two workers and injuring six others.
Police received an emergency call at 3:10 a.m. about the accident at an elevated portion of the Seishin bypass in Shizuoka city.
Around 20 workers and 10 security personnel were involved in installing the steel girder on piers that serve as the foundations for the bridge.
Eight men, in their 30s to 70s, are believed to have been on the girder, which was 2.5 meters wide and high, when it fell about 9 meters to the ground, the Shizuoka city fire department said.
Seven of them were rushed to a hospital, where Hisao Murota, 53, and Kaname Maeda, 51, were confirmed dead, according to the Shimizu Police Station. Two others suffered serious injuries.
There were no reports of passers-by or vehicles being involved in the accident.
The site is about 2.5 kilometers north of JR Shimizu Station.
A 45-year-old resident said she heard the sound of something breaking shortly after 3 a.m. Then a loud “boom” was heard, and her house shook horizontally.
“I thought it was an earthquake or a lightning strike,” she said.
When her husband went outside, he saw people trapped in the fallen debris, she said.
She heard a person shouting, “Are you OK?”
“I’m not OK!” a voice shouted back.
Traffic on the road beneath the elevated bypass had been limited for construction work since the night of July 5. Following the accident, the outbound lane has been closed around the site since 4:30 a.m.
The Seishin bypass is a 24.2-km extension of National Route 1 that will connect Suruga and Shimizu wards.
Under the project, the land ministry has planned 2.4-km elevated sections between Yokosuna-Higashi and Yasaka-Nishi towns, both in Shimizu Ward.
Multiple joint venture groups are involved in the construction work, which started in 2016 to alleviate traffic congestion.
The bypass lane toward Shimizu Ward was scheduled to open around spring 2026.
(This article was written by Kantaro Katashima, Yuichi Koyama, Hisashi Homma and Sokichi Kuroda.)
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A steel girder on the ground at a construction site for the Seishin bypass in Shizuoka city (Yuichi Koyama)
