Freak Accident in China: minivan falls through Road

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A freak accident in the great city of Guilin in Guangxi Province. A Wuling minivan fell straight through a road in the center of the city. The hole appeared out of nothing. The van fell about one meter down on its side, the driver was wounded and taken to a local hospital. Sudden holes in roads are common in China thanks to shoddy construction. Similar holes have eaten complete trucks.

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Freak Accident in China

Authorities usually blame bad weather for sudden-holes-in-roads. The weather has been very bad in Guilin over the last few days. But what road breaks down under a few drops of rain?

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Changchun, May 2011.

Another truck, Beijing, April 2011.

Anshan, Liaoning Province, September 2010.

Lanzhou, Gansu Province, September 2010.

Pics Guilin via: MOP.

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10 COMMENTS

    • Well hello moron too. No, these ain’t sinkholes, these are holes cause by lousy construction of roads. a sinkhole is mostly caused by a natural process and can happen anywhere, these Chinese road holes happen only on the way…

  1. China has a lot of sinkholes. some of the biggest sinkholes in world are in China. Germany build quality won’t stop a sinkhole from happening. So cut your BS about build quality when it’s nature.

  2. What an ignorant article. And some of the comments, too.

    It is clearly a sinkhole. Guilin is built on limestone. Sink holes are common in Guangxi – it has teh world’s biggest. Nothing to do with shoddy road construction.

    But I’d like to know, what is “great” about Guilin? It is an overpriced, rapacious tourist trap.

  3. @ LL.

    Yes Guilin is built on limestone, and yes Guangxi has indeed a lot of sinkholes. This however, is not a sinkhole. Authorities say the hole was caused by… heavy rainfall, which is what they always say. The authorities don’t say it is a sinkhole, which would have been an even easier excuse.

    So I hold my point: caused by crappy construction because normally roads shouldn’t collapse under heavy rainfall. Have a look at the other pics in the article from other cities, those ain’t sinkholes either, are they?

    http://news.163.com/photoview/00AP0001/24239.html
    http://news.beelink.com/20120613/2910982.shtml

  4. Methinks that poor grading, and poor storm sewer drainage construction, creates underground streams that bore cryptic tunnels beneath the surface. When enough soil is carried away by the flow, voila, a sinkhole.
    Welcome China, to heavy vehicle traffic and related problems….

  5. My good friends:
    Yes, a good suggestion….let’s just along.
    But allow me to stir the pot a bit more….Have we given consideration to the idea that in the large cities, intricate old bomb shelter networks were sometimes not recorded, and after years became forgotten, until one of these incidents occur?
    I had not thought of it until now, as the incidence rate continues to grow.

  6. Visit China sometime, friend. China’s filled with shoddy construction all over; new buildings rot within a few years, dams on the Yangtze a few years old are scaring residents, new bridges collapse within several or few years, some roads buckle days after the ribbon cutting.

    Did you hear about the Bird’s Nest (China’s Olympic stadium)? Completed in ’08, it required a team of European engineers in ’09 to attend to rust and structural split issues.

    Like I said, this nonsense happens in China all the time, all over.

  7. Well no… This is a bad case of poorly constructed roads and I know this because it is in my field. Let me explain.
    Proper compaction, usage of materials in a professional way and large amounts of layering and water infiltration resistance contribute to a good road being built. What happens is that the soil under the tarmac hasn’t been compacted enough or graded properly to form a impermeable base for the tarmac. Somehow water got in the space, between the layer of tarmac and the soil, (curruption in site when people want to save money in time and just get paid for a crap job), and naturally “excavated” a void under the road. When the structural integrity of the tarmac fails the road collapses revealing the void which has been developing over time. With natural sinkholes, what happens is that certain porous rocks such as dolomite, in a similar process allow water to infiltrate their sponge like material and create these underground lakes and a weak “roof” which collapes the surface. The two main differences between what we see here and sinkholes, to my knowledge are that sinkholes are caused when there is a interaction between rocks and water, and this is between natural soil and water. The other difference is that in sinkholes the holes are way scarier in size.

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