Two people have died and up to 10 others including two children are said to be missing after a bridge collapse in Brazil.
Seven vehicles including two motorbikes, three lorries and a car were on the bridge connecting the cities of Estreito and Aguiarnopolis over the Tocantins River when it plunged into the water.
The rescue operation was suspended last night as Civil Defence chiefs confirmed a tanker truck carrying sulphuric acid was among the vehicles that ended up in the river.
An investigation was underway today into the collapse yesterday afternoon of the 1960s-built 1,750ft Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira Bridge.
A video shot moments before the collapse by a local councillor showed the moment it began to break up. Elias Junior filmed himself running to safety after honing in on cracks at the side of the road on the bridge structure before it ruptured in front of him as a pick-up 4×4 had to brake before continuing over the disintegrating tarmac.
The politician was recording the video with a friend to ask authorities to fix problems with the bridge which he said could no longer handle the heavy trucks passing over it. The pal could be overheard yelling: “Hey Elias, get out of there” as the first major cracks appeared on the road’s surface.
→ Swipe to see more articles
The politician said after cheating death in the scare: “If it hadn’t been for my friend of mine I maybe wouldn’t be here today. This bridge is over 60 years old and people were always complaining about how precarious it was. We went there to demand all the relevant authorities take action.”
Another local who regularly uses the bridge moaned after the disaster: “I’ve been passing by there every day for years and we all knew this was going to happen, but the governors weren’t concerned. The bridge was opened in 1961 and has never been renovated.”
Authorities in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Maranhao, one of the two the bridge connected, confirmed late last night a 25-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man traveling on separate motorbikes had died.
Military police in Tocantins said eight adults and two children aged three and 11 were still missing although other officials put the total number of people missing at eight.
A man rescued after the drama was taken to hospital with a broken leg. A military police spokesman, describing the number of vehicles that had been carrying sulphuric acid as two, said: “Searches following the bridge collapse were suspended after Fire Brigade divers identified two of the lorries that plunged into the river as vehicles that were transporting a dangerous load. Those two lorries were carrying sulphuric acid.”
Yesterday afternoon’s bridge tragedy came after 41 people died in a bus crash in southeastern Brazil on Saturday. The bus caught fire after colliding with a lorry and a car on the BR-116 road in Lajinha in Minas Gerais state. Initial reports pointed to a block of granite coming off the truck and hitting the bus.
The bus passengers killed included Josinaldo Pereira, his wife Bianca de Jesus Ferreira and their one-year-old daughter Valentina, who were heading to the city of Ipiau in the north-east Brazilian city of Bahia to spend Christmas with Bianca’s family.
Yesterday morning just after 9am, 10 members of the same family were killed after the airplane they were on crashed in the Brazilian mountain resort town of Gramado in the country’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul soon after take-off.
Sao Paulo businessman Luiz Claudio Salgueiro Galeazzi was piloting the private plane. He was travelling with family including his wife, three daughters and his sister.
