BIKE PATH COLLAPSES Rescue workers search for victims in Rio
Posted on 04/25/2016 | About Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Searchers looked on Friday for more victims from the collapse of an elevated bike path that had been heralded as a top legacy project of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, while City Hall said it hired independent agencies to study the cause of the accident.
A 50-meter (164-foot) stretch of the three-month-old, oceanfront Tim Maia bike path fell Thursday after it was apparently hit by a powerful wave. Helicopters fished the bodies of two victims from the ocean, and the head of the fire department's maritime rescue units said Friday that boats, helicopters and planes were continuing to search the water.
Local news reports cited witnesses as saying a total of five people might have been on that section of the bike path when a large wave swept up a rocky cliff, lifted it off support beams and sent it plunging onto the rocks and sea below. Those reports prompted speculation that the section might not have been properly attached to the beams.
Shoddy construction is a perennial problem in Brazil, where graft is a fixture of many construction projects.
Engineers have also raised the possibility that the bike path failed to plan for violent swells despite them being a fairly regular occurrence in the waters off Rio.
In a statement, City Hall said a top local engineering school and a federal water research agency would inspect the length of the bike path in an effort to find the cause of the accident and determine what needs to be done to prevent similar occurrences. The agencies are expected to produce their report within 30 days. In the meantime, the bike path will remain closed.
They agencies also inspect an extension of the bike path that is currently under construction, the statement said.
In an interview early Friday with Globo television, Municipal Executive Secretary Pedro Paulo Carvalho acknowledged that the path's “engineering is under suspicion,” but added that “what we can't do is get ahead of ourselves with a premature diagnosis.”
Inaugurated with considerable fanfare Jan. 17, the Tim Maia bike path links the tony beachfront neighbourhoods of Sao Conrado and Leblon, snaking along the coast high above the rocky cliffs and water. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes hailed the 4-kilometre (2.5-mile) path as “the most beautiful bike path in the world.”
While no Olympic events were slated to be held on the path itself, it owed its construction to the Aug. 5-21 Olympics in Rio and was widely seen as one of the games' most positive legacy projects. However, soon after its Jan. 17 inauguration, detractors began complaining that its narrowness made users vulnerable to muggers. Others complained about its cheap materials, pointing to pieces already rusting and parts of handrails gone missing.
The project, initially budgeted at 35 million Brazilian reais ($12.4 million), ballooned by around 30 percent to 45 million Brazilian reais ($16 million) and was delivered six months late, the Rio newspaper O Globo reported Friday.
The accident was the latest in a series of problems besetting preparations for the games, which include worries about an outbreak of the Zika virus, political turmoil that threatens to topple President Dilma Rousseff, underwhelming ticket sales and budget cuts amid Brazil's worst recession in decades.