Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Beware of falling glass: Puebla’s Sky Bridge takes a beating during storm

Large pieces of glass detached from a 61-meter-high skybridge in Puebla during strong winds and rain Monday afternoon, but no one was injured by the plummeting panes.

Videos show sections of Sky Bridge Popocatépetl falling as the structure swings wildly in the wind. Some of the glass landed in a parking lot below the bridge, which connects two Wyndham Hotel buildings in Angelópolis, a district that is part of the metropolitan area of Puebla city. At least one pane landed near the entrance to one of the hotel buildings.

In one video posted to social media, a woman questions what would happen if a pane of glass landed on someone’s head. “Madre mía,” she exclaimed. “It’s clear that when they built it they didn’t think about wind.”

After witnesses alerted authorities to the damage, emergency services personnel climbed onto the skybridge and removed other loose material that could have detached and potentially caused a fatal accident.

The structure, which opened last December, is the largest glass-bottomed suspension bridge in Latin America. The 300-million-peso (US $14.4 million) bridge is 148 meters long, 1.4 meters wide and weighs 15 tonnes.

With reports from El Sol de Puebla and Corazón de Puebla 

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