At least one person was killed after an elevated road being built in Thailand’s capital collapsed, and two others were listed as missing, with rescue crews unable to access the site Tuesday for fear of a further collapse, authorities said.
Another 12 people were injured in the accident on Monday, according to the department of disaster prevention and mitigation.
It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse of the road on the west side of Bangkok, but Governor Chadchart Sittipan said it had been severely damaged and remained inaccessible.
The body of the one confirmed fatality has still not been recovered, he said, and rescue crews fear there might be more people trapped in the rubble of the elevated road, which has been under construction since 2020.
Video footage of the moment of the collapse showed a blue metal structure that appeared to be used for holding the concrete slabs suddenly falling and bringing the whole structure down. People were seen screaming and running away from the site.
The construction project was commissioned from Tharawan Construction and Npa Construction, according to the contract published on the website of the Office of the Official Information Commission.
Chadchart speculated that the accident resulted from flaws in how the structures were put together.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” he said while inspecting the site Monday evening. “Someone needs to be responsible for this, because this wasn’t something unpreventable.”
Earlier this year, a construction worker was killed and four cars were damaged in a similar accident in Bangkok, when a slab of concrete fell from a raised road under construction.
In that case, a frame being used to lift the slab snapped, causing the concrete section to fall to the ground below.
