The latest news on the collapse of one section of the Houfeng Bridge linking Fengyuan (Hōgen) 豊原 and Houli 后里 is that another body has been recovered, raising the death toll to two, with four people still missing. Today's edition of the Taiwan News newspaper is reporting that:
"The Houfeng Bridge featured on the list of Taiwan's ten most dangerous bridges, and a NT$1.5 billion (￥4.9 billion/$46.8 million) budget had been earmarked for repair work. Bidding on the project was planned for September 24. The bridge had already suffered significant damage during two previous typhoons this summer, media reports said."
The bridge is only a few minutes by car/scooter from where I live and work, so this afternoon I rode over to the Tachia River 大甲渓 to see if I could get a good vantage point of the destruction caused by Typhoon Sinlaku. The only road I could find, however, that led down to the riverbank was around a bend downstream that blocked any views of the accident site (the bridge in the picture below is for trains).
I returned to the main road, went past the bridge (the collapsed section wasn't visible going by due to tree/building cover), and found another route down to the Tachia River. The best photo I could get was this one, which doesn't reveal anything as the span in question was on the other side of the bridge from where I was standing (i.e. the direction going from Fengyuan to Houli). It happened close to the paper mill visible on the left-hand side:
The BBC has a video clip of the destruction on its website (you can also see some of the havoc that occurred in other areas of Taiwan as a result of Sinlaku).
We place so much trust in our engineers and governments, and the structures they build and supposedly maintain for us. Considering our proximity to this bridge, and the frequency with which we have used it, it could have been one of us, or a member of my wife's family, unlucky enough to have been driving across when it collapsed. It is too bad that some people were not so fortunate.
The view looking downriver in the afternoon sun, as I was leaving the scene:
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