Runoffs produced by melting snow have eroded soil and caused a 180-meter stretch of a road to collapse in Russia's Ulyanovsk city on the Volga River, the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
The initial section of pavement that slid off into a nearby ravine earlier this week measured 100 meters by half a meter on a three-lane road, the Ulyanovsk branch of the ministry said.
By Thursday, the affected section had expanded to 180 meters by 10 meters, the statement said.
After initially barring heavy trucks from traveling past the affected areas earlier this week, authorities had blocked the stretch of road to all traffic by Thursday, and drilled drainage systems to pump water from beneath the throughway, the statement said.
Ulyanovsk authorities declared an emergency situation regime in the region, the local Media73 news portal reported.
Mayor Sergei Panchin said Thursday the runoff has started to slow down, Media73 reported. But soil and fragments of pavement continue to slide down toward a nearby railroad, the report said.
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