WHAT can be described as the most serious accident to happen in the city in recent years occurred when buildings collapsed due to an urban infrastructure construction problem.

July 1: At 4:00am, people reported that a section of the Metro 4 project from Pudong Nanlu to Nanpu Bridge was subsiding. A six-floor building on Zhongshan Nanlu collapsed at 9:00am. Another building, housing an audio & video market tilted badly. Shanghai was just entering the flood season.

July 2: A 30-metre-long flood wall broke due to ground subsidence. The breach in the flood wall widened to 60 metres the next day. Armed police used sand bags to fill the crack. At 1:50pm, a section of the underground base of the flood wall lost its rigidity furthering the collapse. River water rushed in through a 2-metre-wide crack.

July 5: A pumping station which had become unstable was demolished. Work began to dismantle another threatened building. The foundations of the Linjiang Huayuan Dasha skyscraper was found to be subsiding on the northwest side.

July 6: The accident-hit part of the tunnel, located at a depth of nearly 30 metres, was sealed with huge reinforced concrete walls, prior to any further repair work being started on it.

Reporter's note:

The photographer Gao Erqiang first stumbled on this story when he found a heavy traffic jam in the area early that morning. Reporter Liang Yu went to the spot immediately. The Shanghai Star also prepared a series of stories on page 9 of July 3-9 issue and page 7, July 10-16 issue.

As the most up-date stories were carried in daily by Liang, a new angle for the Star was essential. I chose to interview ordinary residents affected by this accident. After talking with them, I thought the decision was right because I learnt many fresh human interest details that hadn't been covered by other media.

I particularly liked the lead of the main story carried on July 10:

Wu Chunbao never imagined that after shopping on the morning of July 1, he wouldn't be able to return to his own home.

Unfortunately for Wu, his home was only 50 metres from a near-calamity on the banks of the Huangpu River.

"When I woke up early in the morning, I heard someone cry out: 'The building is cracking', but I didn't pay much attention," said the elderly man. Wu rode his bicycle to go shopping as usual at 6:00am.

After returning at about 7:00am, he found the area had been sealed by the police, who didn't allow him to enter. The situation steadily deteriorated until the building collapsed at about 9:00am.

On July 6, Wu's house, along with those of four neighbours, were demolished to make way for reinforcements to the nearby "Linjiang Huayuan Dasha" building.

Though the old man didn't complain much, I could still tell he was upset to lose his old shabby house.

I also found Tan Jianyong, the deputy general manager of the Shanghai Audio & Video Products Exchange, which was removed on the second day after the incident due to serious tilting. The man said his losses amounted to over 100 million yuan (US$12.1 million). All the products in the market, along with three floors of offices and a floor of hotel rooms were buried in the rubble.

While most newspapers focused on the incident, a weekly newspaper finds itself in a slightly difficult position when trying to catch up with the daily news. To find a new angle, to tell the story of human beings and their true lives, is what the Star cares about most.