The operators of a highway tunnel which collapsed catastrophically causing the deaths of 9 people have caused outrage with their excuse that the reason safety inspections were not carried out there was “because the inspectors couldn’t reach that high.”
According to the company managing the tunnel, of the 3 tunnels with identical construction it manages, the 35-year-old Sasago tunnel in Yamanashi prefecture was the only one in which they failed to test the bolts securing the 1.2 ton concrete ceiling panels to the roof of the tunnel.
They explained that this was because the anchor bolts at Sasago were higher (reaching the dizzying height of 5m) than the other tunnels and “the workers couldn’t reach them,” so instead they did not bother to test them and “just looked at them instead.”
The highly sophisticated safety tests employed by the industry consist of hitting the bolts with a hammer and listening to whether they sound right, and are required by law as often as every 5 years. The last time they were tested at Sasago was in 2000.
“Daily inspections” were carried out as recently as 2 days before the accident, but as these consisted only of “visual inspections” they detected “no problem” with the tunnel.
9 people died when several hundred concrete panels making up the ceiling of the tunnel fell in sequence onto traffic running through the tunnel, crushing them outright or killing them in the ensuing inferno.
One eyewitness, an NHK reporter, was in the tunnel as it collapsed and ascribed his survival only to the extreme performance of his Subaru Impreza WRX STi, which he floored as soon as the panels began to fall.
Despite being hit by a falling concrete panel, the car made it out of the tunnel with driver unharmed.
The accident was apparently caused by a failure in the bolts securing the tiles to the tunnel roof. Rescuers were also severely hampered by the fact the only ventilation available in the tunnel was destroyed as soon as the panels fell.
The tunnel remains closed indefinitely and emergency safety inspections are being conducted on any tunnel conceivably at risk of the same problem, whilst police have raided the operators.
Opportunistic efforts by concrete loving LDP supporters to pin the disaster on the DPJ’s policy of redirecting public funds “from concrete to people” have largely failed thanks to the inconvenient fact that the tunnel was privately operated, and built and privatised under LDP rule in the first place.
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Last pic: "You have dishonored your nation...now commit suicide to repent for what you have done."
They don't do that anymore, which is a real shame because it would shape up the political landscape considerably...
Yes they do, Tadahiro Matsushita, the (former) Minister of Financial Services, commited suicide when his affair was made public.
For the wrong reasons then.
Affair = suicide.
Mass murder = apology/bonus.
Reminds me of Clinton and the following presidents. Society sure is fucked up.
1: The economy was growing due to him.
2: He only got a fucking blow job, which in his case I don't blame him. (look at his wife)
3: He never caused "Mass murder" because of fucking up an inspection or causing a war because of "9/11" nor gasoline which I HIGHLY believe Bush Jr. did. Sorry to say but you really need to brush up on the U.S. if you plan to insult it correctly.
Clinton did'nt do anything except sleep with a nasty-looking intern. Not like ole GW who lied to the American public about WMD just to get his greedy little hands on some oil. Now that deserves Seppuku .
What people don't mention is that Clinton was a nice guy even while getting blow jobs from the intern. Most politicians and rich guys just zip up and give a quick "Thanks, now get out".
Clinton personally bought a book of poetry as a present, on one occasion, and stimulated Monica with a cigar so she could get off as well.
Bill Clinton was an intelligent articulate politician, an excellent president, and a thoughtful blowjob getter. A helluva guy.
21:42
"Clinton did'nt do anything except sleep with a nasty-looking intern."
ORLY? Well it sure as fuck was not GWB that allowed a bill to pass that allowed veritable interest rates, along with the maximum interest rate raised above 20%. Nor was it GWB that worked hard to outsource labor to China. Nor was is GWB that gave North Korea oil in exchange for their "word" that they wouldn't develop nuclear technology. All that was Bill Clinton, the president celebrity idiots like Seth MacFarlane tell stupid kids like yourself to blindly worship. u mad bro?
Anon @16:50: Clinton? You mean Obama! He's the total mass murder here!
The follow people agree that Iraq has WMDs:
The UN Security Council
Hans Blix
Hillary and Bill Clinton
Dianne Feinstein
All but one of the OPEC countries
The Kurds and Iranians who dies in poison gas attacks from Iraq
Congress (with only 9 "no" votes)
And most importantly, Saddam Hussien, who loudly claimed he had them.
The EU Security Council
WTF was Bush supposed to say?!?
And, although it has been almost unreported by the liberal media, US and UN teams are currently cleaning up poison gas depots in Iraq.
Not to mention that at the time of the war, it was widely believed Iraq was franticvally hiding some of his gas shells in Syria. And how we're hearing of the danger of Syria using some of those shells.
But, no, Bush should have "admitted" Iraq had no WMDs and that he "lied."
Are you Bush haters THAT insane?
Last pic just screams "Sumimasen Deshita!"...
amen to that....world wide that would fix a bunch of shit...some times the old ways are the best...
Only problem being that most of the time it would be an almost innocent scapegoat commiting the suicide while the real quilty people would just get away with no real problems.
Exactly, the real shitbags would still continue to exist and the honorable ones would all be dead.
I'm hoping the guy with the giant axe to decapitate them was left out of the picture by accident.
It's not suicide, it's seppoku you're looking for.
Suicides are boring and not worth reading about.
Seppoku on the other hand...
If you're going to try to correct people, at least have your facts straight.
I dunno, seems to me like death by number puzzle would be more interesting.
Anon commit sudoku, you have dishonored yourself.
It's called Seppuku. Sudoku is a kind of word puzzle.
If it was Soviet Russia, Stalin would personally shot them
And it's the higher-ups who /should/ suicide.
"Because the inspectors couldn't reach that high" really means:
(a) "We didn't want to buy our workers the ladders they need to do their jobs properly"; or,
(b) "Our (executives') arms could only reach high enough to slips wads of construction company / yakuza kickback cash into our suit-jacket pockets."
Props to the NHK reporter?
Tunnel collapsing?:
1) Stare in horror
2) Scream in terror
3) Floor it
Initial D anyone?
'sniff' that hero STi....may it rest in peace...
Poor GC8...
you know you had a good car when it saves your ass from these kinda disasters
Subaru B-pillar, fuck yeah.
Driving inside a big cage made up of eight layers of steel.
its not steel its week sheet metal....that shit wont save you either, you have to be lucky and not get hit directly, or sit in a car made of krupp stahl :>
I'll go for option 1.
Wait a minute.. this wasn't in china.. oh japan how could you... lol
it didn't explode , it collapsed , collapse are common there : birth rate , police IQ ...
/semi-troll
Fukushima was built by Americans. This tunnel was built by French. No wonder they both collapsed. And Subaru is Japanese, and it survived.
Both cases no one was properly doing any inspections.
Stuff doesn't stay good after being built if people don't take care of it ongoing.
At least they weren't built by Chinese.
The only thing you can hold the builder at fault for is any kind of design flaw. Maintenance was up to the respective owners, and obviously they didn't do a very good job.
Why are these panels so heavy in the first place? They don't seem to be a structural part of the tunnel construction and their purpose is mostly aesthetic.
Ohhh, so only the concrete roof fell down. I thought the whole damn mountain had collapse with how they were saying it on the local news. This ain't as bad as I thought, the tunnel could be reopened relatively soon with how things are now.
Also, what kind of fucking morons decide that it's too high for inspections... I'm glad we don't have retards like that here when they are inspecting the tunnels and bridges, especially with our massive 45~ years old three-level stack freeway interchange that's more than starting to show it's age, with pieces falling almost every other week and requiring emergency fixes all the time... would've probably fallen down 10+ years ago if it was up to this idiots.
I wish politicians would bow when they fuck up in my country. Even if they didn't mean it and planned to go straight out and fuck up again, it would please me. Bow, you worthless sons of whores! BOW! HA HA
Bowing is just a way of hiding your trollface while you laugh at the victim.
Say politician should go to Jail...
If they so proactive in controlling society enough to mess with manga, to ban sales of young girl panties and otherwise lay down for New World Order Globalist Banker butt rape of social monitoring/control, they should have to be responsible for the SAFETY as well. Bridge fail, if inspection / maintenance bad, politician go to jail, simple as that. More than a couple deaths face execution.
If your testing the bolts by taping on them with a hammer.... wouldn't that make a faulty bolt drop the concrete panel on top of you??
Actually you're standing on top of said panel...
Not much of an improvement
Well you'll catch it when only one or two bolts are bad and before there's a danger of it falling.
Reminds me of Angel beats.
Still better than a tunnel built by the chinese
Ohhh I see someone is a LDP hater!
Too bad DPJ won't be able to do more damage to Japan after these elections!
wow japan has really gone downhill if they can't even use a ladder
Thank you for saying that. I was wondering if anyone else thought that when they saw the title.
Makes one really look forward to the restart of some more nuclear reactors (NOT!) ...
Oops, replied to wrong commenter:
I agree. Those reactors are 40 year old technology. They should be replaced with the vastly safer new designs. France does this, and gets 80% of the electricity from nukes, with no real accidents in over 50 years.