Police were searching the offices on Tuesday of the company operating an expressway tunnel where hundreds of concrete ceiling slabs collapsed onto moving vehicles below, killing nine people.
Those killed in Sunday’s accident were travelling in three vehicles in the 4.7-kilometre long Sasago Tunnel about 80 kilometres west of Tokyo. The transport ministry has ordered inspections of 49 other highway and road tunnels of similar construction around the mountainous country. The tunnel, on a highway that links the capital to central Japan, opened in 1977.
About a dozen uniformed police were shown on television entering the headquarters of Central Japan Expressway Company early on Tuesday, toting cardboard and plastic boxes.
“Yes they are searching our offices here. We will be fully cooperating with them,” said Osamu Funahashi, an official at the government-owned company.
Police and the highway operator are investigating why the concrete slabs in the Sasago Tunnel collapsed. An inspection of the tunnel’s roof in September found nothing amiss, according to Satoshi Noguchi, another company official.
An estimated 270 concrete slabs, each weighing 1.4 metric tons, suspended from the arched roof of the tunnel fell over a stretch of about 110 metres, Noguchi said.