In the early hours of May 1st, there was a sudden road collapse on the Meilong Expressway (Meizhou Section) in Guangdong Province. As of the time of reporting by Dajiyuan, officials stated that the incident resulted in 20 vehicles falling into the collapse, leading to 24 deaths and 30 injuries. CCTV of the Chinese Communist Party was celebrating the holiday fervently. State media speculated that the accident was caused by force majeure.
At 10 p.m. Beijing time on May 1st, CCTV of the Chinese Communist Party was airing a “May Day” celebration program; on Weibo, the top trending topics included Xi Jinping’s holiday greetings, followed by the CCTV evening show, with the Meizhou expressway accident ranking third.
Today, major Chinese Communist Party media like Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi wrote back on April 29 to a Serbian worker at the Hesteel Group’s Smederevo Steel Plant. This may be related to Xi’s upcoming visit to Serbia. Meanwhile, the news of the collapse on the Meizhou expressway was placed in a less prominent position. Official media reported that the Party Secretary and Governor of Guangdong Province directed the response to the Meizhou expressway collapse.
According to high-definition aerial photos released by official media at the scene of the incident, the collapse area on the expressway showed the road surface sliding down the mountainside, with soil sliding at least tens of meters away. Only the highway guardrails connected to the pillars remained suspended in the air. The collapsed area formed a large pit with a significant number of burnt car wrecks inside.
However, the Zhejiang Radio and Television Group’s integrated news center for China Blue News on Weibo released a topic in the evening about “How to self-rescue when a ground collapse occurs.” The post explained that ground collapse is a geodynamic phenomenon in which the shallow rock and soil body collapses downward under certain conditions due to natural or human forces, forming a collapse pit on the ground with uncertainty and strong destructiveness. When a ground collapse occurs, how should one self-rescue? Click the video ↓↓ to learn together!”
One user’s comment, “a geodynamic phenomenon with uncertainty and strong destructiveness,” caught attention, with netizens expressing doubts about the self-rescue methods suggested.
Some users reacted:
– “Self-rescue? If you fall, it’s all about luck.”
– “So many words, driving in the car, you can’t see or hear clearly, how do you prevent it?”
– “Late at night, you can’t see anything in front of you and drive on. It’s only when a few cars fall ahead that you realize. Whether it is man-made disaster depends on whether there has been strengthening of settlement monitoring recently. If there was monitoring and an alarm was raised but not effectively handled, then it is a man-made disaster.”
– “Can those who survive this incident ever dare to take the highway again in this lifetime?”
“Highway collapses, how many unknown architectural flaws are involved! Suggest a thorough investigation! 24 lives lost is regretful!”
“Ordinary workers, celebrating the rare May Day holiday, even waiting until midnight to take the highway for free, encountering such unexpected events, what sorrows for how many families. A collapse occurred last year; why wasn’t it taken seriously? What are the relevant departments doing?”
Weibo seems to have limited discussion, showing the topic had 5.085 million views but only 465 discussions.