At least 45 workers were killed when a bridge being built by Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company and Gammon India suddenly collapsed. According to the latest reports, 27 bodies have been recovered and there are at least 18 more known victims trapped beneath the debris or in the river’s deep water. According to a Senior police official Rajeev Dasot: “There are two kinds of operations, overground and underwater. In both operations there is no chance of anyone surviving now.” One of the victims is reported to be an engineer working for Hyundai.
The bridge has been in construction since 2007 with Hyundai having a 63% stake in the 49.9 million U.S. dollars project and was running “almost a year behind schedule.” Two project managers, including J.Y. Hue, a Korean working with Hyundai Engineering, have been arrested and are accused of culpable homicide.
Hyundai has announced that it will sue Gammon India claiming that “Gammon’s faulty construction caused the accident.” Gammon India is India’s largest construction company and was founded in 1922 but judging from its recent history, Hyundai may have some basis for its claim. Three serious accidents this year alone and in July it was banned from construction for two years.
It seems almost ironic that Gammon India, in an interview with the Economic Times reported that they recently experimented with a new design to make the bridge over Koshi river in Bihar more environment-friendly. If Hyundai’s allegations are true, Gammon India might want to consider new designs that are safer.
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Reminds me of Seongsu bridge. I actually saw that bridge collapse — it was on my way to school. There was a bus hanging on the edge, then it flipped over and fell. That was the one that was carrying all those middle- and high-school kids, causing most of the casualties from that collapse.
If I were India I’d offer a trade: the Hebei Spirit captain for the two Hyundai engineers.
Tragic. Hopefully Hyundai didn’t cut any corners. Overall, Korean construction companies have had an excellent recent record, which is why their companies are used so often in the Middle East and Asia. The Arabs are often repeat customers.
But who knows if they cut corners in India? At the very least, Hyundai picked a shitty Indian partner.
Someone once told me that a French construction firm pulled out of a joint project with Hyundai to build tunnels for the KTX. He told me the French firm was upset about Hyundai cutting corners, something about an insufficient amount of re-bar used in support columns. Does anyone know if there’s truth to this, or is it just another ugly rumor?
wedge: Payback is a beeyach!
falloon: I heard a slightly different version in ’03; it was a German firm that pulled out because the Koreans were using #5 rebar instead of the specified #8. Don’t have any substantiation, though. Would be nice if someone in the know could post a link.
Seems to me the French involved in the KTX project are pretty happy to endorse it:
http://www.alstom.com/pr_corp_v2/2004/cn/32067.EN.php?languageId=EN&dir=/pr_corp_v2/2004/cn/&idRubriqueCourante=23132&cookie=true
A friend of mine was supervising the construction of half of the 서해만 bridge, and after many incidents — including the collapse of the machinery that held sections of the bridge in place — the company decided “never again”…
Then again, this accident happened in India — both parties could be at fault here…
@babotaengi Alstom is just but one of the companies involved in the Korean TGV project. They formed a company, Eukorail, that was in charge of the overall construction project. They were not the only French involved in that project, by far.
Alstom is a French-British company which among other things makes train equipment like trains, signals, etc. but is not a construction company and as such was not involved in the building of the KTX tracks. I believe the KTX tracks were built by Korean companies with engineering/consulting from French railway engineering outfit Systra. (The construction of the initial test track didn’t involve Systra which led to the project being delayed several months/years as the track wasn’t up to high speed train standards.)
#4
Why would a tunnel need a support column? What kind of a tunnel are you talking about? Do you even know what you are talking about?
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