A bridge collapse in central China has swept a car into the swollen river below, killing at least two people and raising urgent questions about the resilience of ageing infrastructure worldwide. The incident, which occurred on Tuesday in Hunan province, comes as the UK faces its own reckoning with crumbling roads, railways and bridges after decades of underinvestment.
Eyewitnesses reported hearing a loud crack before the concrete structure buckled, plunging a vehicle into the fast-moving floodwaters. Rescuers recovered one body from the wreckage; the other victim remains missing, presumed dead. Local officials have blamed the collapse on heavy rainfall, which has saturated the region for weeks, but engineers point to deeper structural weaknesses exacerbated by climate change.
For the UK, this is a cautionary tale. The National Infrastructure Commission estimates that one in ten of Britain's bridges is structurally deficient. The British Geological Survey warns that extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent in a warming world, accelerate the deterioration of ageing concrete and steel. Meanwhile, the Department for Transport has proposed a 27% cut to road maintenance budgets over the next two years.
As a climate scientist, I must stress that this is not an isolated incident. The physics is simple: a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leading to more intense rainfall. In the UK, the Environment Agency predicts that river flooding could become five times more frequent by 2050. Infrastructure built for a 20th-century climate is being tested by 21st-century conditions. The result is a race between repair and disaster.
The Chinese bridge, built in 1996, had not been inspected in five years. In the UK, the average age of the country's major road bridges is 50 years. Many were designed to last 60 years. The window is closing. We need a national programme of retrofitting and resilience testing. We need to acknowledge that the cost of inaction is far higher than the cost of maintenance.
This is not a call for panic. It is a call for calm urgency. The tools exist to assess risk: structural health monitoring, flood mapping, climate modelling. The investment must follow. Otherwise, the question will not be if a UK bridge collapses, but when. And that answer may come sooner than we think.
In the wake of this tragedy, let us honour the victims by learning the lesson. Infrastructure is a living system, not a static asset. It requires constant care. Ignoring that reality is no longer an option.
