Paris bridge closed after collapse warning during Olympics

A busy walkway under one of the most famous bridges across the Seine in Paris has been closed after nearly collapsing under the load of spectators watching the Olympics.
The metal footbridge connected to the Pont de Bir Hakeim, a two-level structure opposite the Eiffel Tower, carries Metro trains, road traffic and pedestrians. It began pitching dangerously as spectators watched the mass marathon race pass beneath on the Avenue President Kennedy on Saturday night, with heavy bolts seen falling from the footbridge supports.
Police evacuated the spectators and city engineers this week ordered the footbridge close until repairs are carried out in the autumn. “We came close to a disaster,” a city official told Le Figaro.
The Bir Hakeim bridge — opened in 1905 as the Passy Viaduct and renamed after a 1942 action by Free French forces against the Germans in north Africa — has featured in many films, including Louis Malle’s 1958 Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud (Lift to the Scaffold) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 Last Tango in Paris. In April, Tom Cruise performed motorcycle stunts on it for the forthcoming eighth instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise. The French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo clambered over the roof of a speeding train on the bridge’s elevated line in a pursuit scene in Henri Verneuil’s 1975 action film Peur sur la Ville (The Night Caller).
Tourists crowd on to the bridge year-round, often risking themselves in heavy traffic, to take selfies with the unobstructed backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. In December, a German Filipino tourist was knifed to death on the bridge by an Iranian-born man.
Local residents have been calling for repairs since a municipal vehicle ran into the bridge in 2021. Jérémy Redler, the conservative mayor of the 16th arrondissement, said the Socialist-led city council had turned a deaf ear to his demands for urgent repairs. “We knew there would be many tourists with Olympic events passing underneath. Luckily nothing tragic happened,” he told Le Parisien.
David Belliard, the deputy Paris mayor in charge of infrastructure, has promised that work costing €500,000 will be carried out to restore the footbridge later this year.