Glass walkway suspended 3,540 feet above ground cracks under tourists’ feet

BY CAILEY RIZZO From Mashable

A section of a new glass-bottomed walkway at Yuntai Mountain Geological Park in Henan Province, China, cracked at around 5 p.m. Monday afternoon, causing the tourists on it to understandably freak out.

Lee Dong Hai, a tourist who was on the walkway, posted on the social media site Weibo: “I was almost at the end and suddenly I heard a sound. My foot shook a little. I looked down and I saw that there was a crack in the floor.”

The walkway is suspended at a height of about 1,080 meters, or 3,543 feet.

“A lot of people started to scream,” Hai wrote. “I screamed out, ‘It cracked! It really cracked!’ and then I pushed the people in front of me so that we could run out of the way.”

A spokesperson for the Yuntai Mountain tourism bureau told People’s Daily Online that the cracks occurred after a tourist dropped a stainless steel mug on the walkway. Only one of a total of three layers of glass broke, so the tourists were not in danger, the spokesperson said.

The U-shaped walkway, which just opened in September, is closed until further notice.

The types of glass used for these kinds of attractions is designed to seemingly shatter without giving way, according to a statement from Willis Tower, in Chicago, where glass in a viewing box high above the city cracked last year.

Glass walkways and bridges have become extremely popular in China: The walkway at Yuntai opened on Sept. 20, and just days later a 900-foot glass suspension bridge opened in Yunnan province. There are several more glass walkways in the works.

In August, crews were finishing construction on Asia’s largest glass scenic platform, on the cliff at Tian Sheng San Qiao in Xiannushan town, in Chongqing. The attraction was scheduled to open in early October.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press

IMAGES:
Cracked
The panel of the bridge that cracked on Yuntai Mountain.IMAGE: LIDONGHAISHUOHEZAINIHAOWODEHAI/WEIBO
Video screenshots
walkway1 A worker carts cement to build a road on the side of a mountain in Shiniuzhai National Geopark in Pingjiang county, Yueyang city, central China’s Hunan province, Apr. 10, 2015. IMAGE: IMAGINECHINA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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