Why was this the only height in Bangkok to drop after the earthquake?

Only one building fell in Bangkok during the earthquake on Friday, which shook Myanmar, hundreds of miles away. Recovery efforts continue with the killing of at least 15 people and dozens are still missing. It may take months to determine the cause.

But the interviews with the workers who were on the site, along with the early official results, highlighted the possible problems in the design and quality of construction.

At the China Railway 10th Engineering Group, a state -owned Chinese company with about ten other projects in Thailand, which contractors tried to remove documents from the site after the disaster.

Behind that Chinese company is the mother, China for railways – giant for Chinese infrastructure with high debts, hunger for new projects and subsidiaries facing accusations of weakness safety In many countries.

The Bangkok workers told the New York Times that China is a 10 railway, which was part of a consortium building the building, and contractors who receive low salaries who have turned into low -quality materials, and used narrower columns of usual.

Thai officials who test the twisted metal from the rubble said that they had found the below required steel bars – made by a Thai factory with their Chinese owners closed by the authorities in December.

The Anti -Corruption Control Authority also said it had indicated construction violations in the 30 -storey tower before March 28, when the vagarus workers saw the tall separation.

“The columns on the third floor – where I stood up and looked back – did not explode the firmness,” said Netiphong Phatethong, 38, who is barely electric, is barely waiting for news about his missing friends on Tuesday. “They collapsed when the minerals were crushed inside.”

Thai officials, who describe the collapse as a blow to the country’s image, moved strongly to investigating the federation with the construction contract of $ 62 million per tower. It was supposed to include government accounts.

At the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra ordered the authorities to scrutinize all projects in Thailand, which included Chinese railway 10. It did not mention whether the parent company would be investigated.

“We really need to find an answer,” Ms. Paetongtarn told reporters. “We need to tell people and the world what happened in Thailand.”

Under pressure

The joint project of the 30-storey tower was registered in Thailand in 2018. It included a Thai developer, the development of Italian-Taylandy, but according to workers, China was run by China Railway 10.

A promotional video recently released by the Chinese company showed drones for the building and praised the quality of its construction. Chinese railway 10 is also responsible for an airport station in southern Thailand, which was supposed to end in January Less than 40 percent full As of March, according to the Ministry of Transport.

The Bangkok office at China Railway 10 did not respond to emails seeking a comment. In a statement on Facebook, the Chinese embassy urged Chinese companies to cooperate with an investigation into the Thai government.

The China Railway Group, the parent company, has started building most of the high -speed railways of about 30,000 miles. But in recent years, with the demand for new projects at home, the company and its subsidiaries have expanded their scope to impose to work.

Its timing often coincided with the priorities of the Chinese government. In 2019, Beijing also sought closer relationships in the Railways Group in the Pacific He bought a sleeping golden mine In Suleiman Islands. Tell the workers there are times that safety concerns have often been ignored.

Along the way, the company’s debts rose. The annual report for 2024 shows the total obligations of $ 211 billion, or nearly 112 billion dollars that the company carried five years ago.

“When the heavy debt burden,” said Victor Xih, a Chinese policy and finance specialist at the University of California, said.

Another Chinese railway company – along with the alleged corrupt officials – was blamed for The collapse of the umbrella of the train station In Serbia last November, 15 people were killed.

Add stress in Bangkok, the construction was behind the schedule. The building was less than half of it despite the beginning of 2020. It was said that the government had threatened to cancel the project in 2024 due to the delay.

In addition to doubts, four Chinese citizens who defined themselves were arrested as contracted from the camera the day after the elimination of the documents removal from the office behind the rubble. They told the authorities that it was to obtain an insurance claim. The police seized the documents. The men were arrested, then released.

Weak

Engineers have struggled with the structures in Bangkok to understand the reason for the building’s upgrade once.

Pennung Warnitchai, director of the Seismic Research Center in Thailand, who helped formulate an earthquake Bangkok, said the building should have been able to stay awake. He said that the ground movement that was discovered in Bangkok after the earthquake was struck, “was about a third to half of the level that we consider in the design of the model buildings.”

Thailand generally follows an American model of earthquakes, which means that skyscrapers begin with a strengthened concrete heart. Usually the nucleus a RectangularWith floors and columns of vertical support emanating abroad.

In the case of the building that fell, the designers placed outside the center, adding that he had seen the plans. Other buildings have no similar design. But because the earthquake distance has created longer periods between movement waves, and with a large part of Bangkok on the soft soil, he said, the building may have been affected and twisted, which increases the danger.

Mr. Pennung and many other engineers confirmed that it is too early to determine the cause of the collapse. Steel quality, design, work standards and soil can all play a role. But he said that the evidence from workers and officials has gathered so far, in addition to video clips of the earthquake, suggested that the columns or supportive columns give way to the lower floors.

“It seems that it has collapsed from the bottom, not the top,” he said.

Other experts agreed that the building did not fall as much as it corresponds to the accounts of the workers who fled at the last minute.

Six employees of the dropped building, who worked from the third to the tenth, said that the project often seemed unsafe. Some of the issues they reported were relatively simple: many workers wore sneakers instead of steel shoes; The requirements for harnessing the higher floors have been ignored.

Three workers who have experience on several floors said that the building columns were thinner than those they saw on other high -rise construction sites. Abtishat Chiahlo, who worked on the eighth floor, said that his supervisor was so worried that he measured the columns himself “and said that these columns are not correct.”

He added: “I did not think about it at that time, but now,” compared to other projects that I worked on, this floor was not strong. “

The employer, who refused to give their names for fear of revenge by the employer, said that the Chinese managers often ignore suggestions from their Thai counterparts and used low football contracts that led to a decrease in the quality of materials.

Reports The China Railway Group also highlighted in Serbia a lack of quality control. There, an engineer at the station with the deadly collapse said that the contractor who hired the official Federation had ignored the design specifications and added an additional concrete to the umbrella.

The problems of the Bangkok building included the use of steel that was very weak.

Samples of steel tapes failed in sizes collected from the site’s tests by the Iron and Steel Institute in Thailand for their bloc and chemistry and their ability to deal with pressure. Mr. Nunthai said that other samples have achieved the required criteria, but the Chinese company that was created by the same Chinese company: Shin Ki Yuan Steel, which had a factory in Ryung County in Thailand.

The Thai authorities closed the factory in December, a risky martyr after an accident related to gas leaks. They seized more than 2,400 tons of steel after the tests that they found that the reinforcing steel did not meet approved criteria for high gossip and boron content, undermining the attachment to concrete and weakening its strength.

The authorities also requested that the company’s executive managers remember any steel that has already been sold. It is not clear that they did so.

The company cannot be accessed to comment on the phone number on its website.

Chinese construction networks, led by state -owned companies, played major roles in the last construction boom in Bangkok, hosting of the train apartments and lines and other projects. The Thai government has increasing relations with China, the largest investor in Thailand. Last month, at the request of Beijing, Thailand was deported 40 Ouigor asylum seekers Returning to China, he drew a sharp reprimand from United Nations officials and activists who have long warned that men might face torture and imprisonment upon their return.

Inside China, Beijing sought to watch the coverage and discuss the collapsed building. A clarification story about the building structure was removed by an investigation, Kaxin, and a short piece by the official news agency, Xinhua, about the losses caused by the collapse, shortly after its publication.

But in Thailand, Fears of long buildings It is now common – anger has risen.

“I have increasingly criticized the general feelings of Chinese commercial presence and government transactions,” said Titenan Bongsodherak, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Chalongcorn.

“The collapse of the Chinese building designed by the Chinese is likely to enhance this critical opinion,” he added.

David Pearson and Perry Wang Hong Kong reports have contributed to the reports; Keith Bradcher and for me From Beijing.