High humidity caused the collapse of a ceiling of an underground subway station in Shanghai. CCTV footage captured the incident which occurred at the subway’s Siping station.
Although the footage showed three passengers walking near the exit of the station, none of them were directly under the portion of the collapsed ceiling when parts of it, such as tiles and joints, started to fall. All three ran away from the falling roof.
By the time the whole section of the ceiling fell to the ground, no one was on the walkway. Some lights and parts of the roof were still dangling mid-air. A minute after the first signs of collapse, the ceiling was still shaking.
It was fortunate that the incident happened at 2:30 p.m. on Friday. Otherwise the walkway would have been packed with a lot of passengers traveling during rush hour. Officials blamed the collapse on strong winds in the tunnel, reported Mirror.
The station entrance was closed immediately but became operational again by 4:10 p.m., or about 120 minutes after the accident.
The video, posted on Miaopai, a video-sharing site in China, has become viral with more than 500,000 hits.