:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/DLTVH7T7OZDWPBKP4QE4WDIOTM.jpg "Videos: torrential rains caused an accident in the subway works and opened a crater in São Paulo")
An accident in some works for the construction of a new metro line in San Pablo, carried out by the Spanish group Acciona, caused this Tuesday a collapse and opened a crater on a major highway in Brazil’s largest city.
The accident took place near the “Marginal Tietê”, a key ring road that connects different regions of the São Paulo capital, and affected the works of the future Line-6 Orange of the São Paulo metro, without causing fatalities or injuries.
Acciona pointed out as the cause “the breakage of a sewage collector located near a ventilation shaft and emergency exit” and reported in a note that company teams and “other technicians” are already in place “to determine the facts.”
Before, the San Pablo Fire Department pointed out that a tunnel boring machine was able to reach a nearby river or a pipe during the drilling work, thesis discarded shortly after by the regional government and by the company itself.
All the construction workers managed to leave the facilities on time and only two received precautionary attention after having been in contact with “contaminated water”, according to firefighters.
In images captured by a helicopter from the television channel Globonews It is observed the moment in which the Water advances through the tunnel and a crater opens up, engulfing bits of asphalt as the walls of the open hole give way under the force of the water.
The accident also caused kilometers of traffic jams in the city of São Paulo, in which they live 12 million inhabitants.
The city’s governor, Joao Doria, who will be a candidate in the presidential elections next October, went to the site of the disaster to support the workers and asked Acciona to prepare, together with the San Pablo Mayor’s Office, a plan to normalize traffic in the ‘Marginal Tietê’ as soon as possible.
Also, Doria reported that Acciona “will be questioned about possible engineering solutions so that the works can be resumed in the shortest possible time”, provided that the safety of the workers is guaranteed.
Acciona assumed the construction of line 6 of the São Paulo metro after several years at a standstill. The Spanish group undertook, in October 2020, to complete the works in five years and then it will be in charge of operating and maintaining the metro line.
According to the company’s information at the time, it is the largest infrastructure project in the company’s history and also the largest public-private partnership in development in Latin America, valued at almost 3,000 million dollars.
The orange line will have 15 stations along more than 15 kilometers in length, will connect the center of the largest Brazilian city with its extreme northwest and will cross several neighborhoods where some of the main universities of São Paulo are located.
The Brazilian press recalled a Similar incident occurred in 2007, when a collapse in one of the underground tunnels excavated to expand the São Paulo subway opened a huge crater in the Pinheiros region and caused seven deaths.
The heavy rainstorm that has hit the state has left at least 24 deceased, including eight children, and 660 families evacuated since last weekend, official sources reported Monday.
(With information from EFE)
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