Bereaved relatives and others mourned on Monday the nine victims of the December 2012 partial collapse of a tunnel on an expressway in Yamanashi Prefecture.
They offered silent prayers and flowers for the victims at a memorial ceremony held near the Sasago Tunnel at 8:03 a.m., when the disaster occurred 12 years ago. “My pain and regrets are getting stronger year after year, no matter how many years pass,” one of the relatives said.
The ceremony, held by Central Nippon Expressway, or Nexco Central, which manages the tunnel on the Chuo Expressway, was attended by some 60 people, including executives of the company and officials of the transport ministry as well as people who lost their loved ones.
“Without letting the memories and the lessons fade away, we will work on the permanent challenge of improving the safety of expressways,” Nexco Central President Tadashi Nawata said at the ceremony.
“We have been asking the company (since the disaster) to fulfill its accountability for the truth,” Shinichi Ishikawa, 75, who lost his daughter, Yuri, 28, in the tragedy, told the press after the ceremony.
On Dec. 2, 2012, concrete ceiling slabs of the Sasago Tunnel on the inbound lanes of the Chuo Expressway in Yamanashi fell and crushed three cars, killing nine people and injuring three others.
Over the disaster, authorities took action against 10 Nexco Central officials, including sending papers to public prosecutors for suspected professional negligence resulting in death. None of them were indicted in 2018, however.
A prosecution inquest panel in Yamanashi decided later that the failure to indict was wrong for two of the 10 officials. In April 2020, however, prosecutors decided not to indict the pair, bringing the authorities’ investigation into the tunnel disaster to an end.