Passengers at a metro station in Shanghai were forced to flee to safety as a ceiling collapsed in a corridor, causing tiles to smash onto the floor. Several people at Siping Road Station, in the north of the city, were almost hit as the roof started to cave in.

Footage from the scene shows people looking nervously at the ceiling as the first tile came loose and then running as the ceiling fell.

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One man had just walked underneath the area that collapsed and would have been hit with the tiles if the incident had occurred just second earlier, but no one was hurt in the 29 July incident, officials confirmed.

Zhu Yao, manager of the Siping Road Station, said: "We coordinated with the police immediately, cordoning off the area and closing the station. Our staff guided the passengers in and out from other channels, then we double-checked the accident site to make sure no one had been injured."

The humid weather has been cited as the cause of the ceiling collapse, CCTV Plus reported, with a senior engineer stating the weather had affected the grid the tiles were attached to.

"After examinations we found part of the grid work was corroded due to dense humidity, so the grid work was unable to sustain the ceiling tiles. A sudden change of wind pressure also contributed to the accident," Ma Zhongzheng, working on Shanghai Subway Line 10, told the news channel.

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