CANADA: Canadian rescue workers found five people crushed to death early yesterday after working through the night to reach two cars buried under the rubble of an overpass that collapsed on to an expressway near Montreal.
The overpass came crashing down on Saturday afternoon, trapping several vehicles and injuring another six people, three of them seriously.
The collapse came just an hour after a Quebec transport ministry worker inspected the site following reports of falling debris and determined there was no need to close the road, government officials said.
"We have two dead in one car, three in the other," said Jayson Gauthier, a spokesman for Quebec's provincial police force.
"They were removed, they were brought to the municipal garage where the bodies were extracted out of the vehicles." Quebec officials have called a public inquiry into the incident.
The French-speaking province's minister of transport, Michel Despres, said the structure, built 35 years ago, was appraised every three years along with other bridges and roadways and was not considered in need of major renovations.
The last inspection was in May 2005.
"This is quite a young construction - normal life expectancy is 70 years," Mr Despres said at a news conference.
"There was nothing to indicate, technically, how this could have happened." An identical structure elsewhere in Laval, just north of Montreal, was closed, and officials plan to inspect similar structures over the next 48 hours.
Several motorists told Canada's LCN television network they had called police up to one hour before the collapse to report seeing fissures appearing in the overpass roadbed and chunks of concrete falling to the road below.
Quebec officials yesterday said a transport ministry worker then inspected the site, filed a report and left. Half an hour after his departure, Quebec police warned the ministry again that debris had been spotted falling from the bridge, Mr Despres said.
Four minutes later, the overpass collapsed.
"If there had been the slightest clue that the bridge was likely to fall . . . he would have asked for it to be closed," Mr Despres said of the unidentified worker. "The person who went to do that job, I'm sure this person must feel very unhappy today." Television images taken by helicopter showed a large section of the overpass had collapsed, with three vehicles jammed among concrete beams and slabs of asphalt roadbed.
The collapse occurred on Boulevard de la Concorde, a busy road that crosses over Autoroute 19 in Laval. A three-lane section of the overpass collapsed over all six lanes of the road underneath.
In November 2000, a man was killed and two people injured after a concrete section of an overpass under construction in Laval collapsed.