A bridge in central Dresden partially collapsed in the early hours of Wednesday morning on a busy public transport route that at any other time of day could have led to a catastrophe, officials said.
No one was injured, according to initial reports, but a tram passed over the bridge in the eastern German city some 18 minutes before the structure partially disintegrated into the river below at around 3 am (0100 GMT), the fire brigade said.
The Carola Bridge is a key Dresden traffic artery, with a pedestrian and cycle path alongside the tram tracks crossing the Elbe River. All were affected by the accident, according to a hastily convened situation centre.
Police cordoned off the area and the fire brigade called on the public to avoid the area and not to obstruct emergency services.
The bridge, which spans the Elbe in the city centre, is used daily by numerous cars, trams, cyclists and pedestrians.
The damage affects some 100 metres, the Dresden fire service said. An approximately 1-metre gap has formed at the bridgehead on the old town side and district heating pipes were also damaged in the accident.
"The whole urban area is currently experiencing a district heating outage," the fire service said. Escaping water has completely flooded parts of the banks of the river nearby, known as the Terrassenufer.
The police spokesman said they currently assume it was an accident and that there are no indications of external interference. There were no trams on the bridge at the time of the accident, according to the Dresden Transport Company.
It remains unclear how parts of the bridge became loose. The fire service assumes there is an acute risk that the bridge will further disintegrate.
“We expect more parts of the bridge to collapse,” said a fire service spokesman on Wednesday morning at the scene, warning people to stay far away from the bridge, citing a danger to life near the structure.
Officials called in a drone team to assess the extent of the damage.
Significant disruptions are expected particularly during the busiest times of day, and trams have been rerouted, affecting car traffic too.
The waterway is also closed, police reported, as have the Elbe cycle path and the Terrassenufer, as engineers and administrators inspect the scene and assess the next steps to take, the fire service stated.
Officials said corrosion could have caused the accident.
"We had massive chloride ingress here in GDR times," said Holger Kalbe, head of Dresden's bridge and engineering structures department, referring to the former East Germany. A chloride ingress is a common cause of deterioration in reinforced concrete structures.
At the point where the bridge section collapsed during the night, there had been a public transport pylon, he said, adding it was conceivable "that the chlorides penetrated massively at this point and led to corrosion of the reinforcement inside the bridge."
The bridge is a prestressed concrete bridge consisting of three sections. Two parts have been renovated, while the third section, the part of the bridge that collapsed, was due to be renovated next year.
The other sections only reopened to traffic in March 2024 after being renovated for several months, the city said on its website.
Also, a trial traffic project aimed at making the bridge safer for cyclists and pedestrians was to run until the end of the year.
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