MIAMI: A crack which was analysed to be not at all a safety concern for the working condition of a new pedestrian bridge, collapsed just three hours after the meet by Engineers and State and University officials killing at least 6 people who were on their way in their vehicles under the bridge.
The team of experts which involved FIGG, which is the private contractor to design the overall structure, the school, Florida Department of Transportation officials and Munilla Construction Management (MCM) concluded that the crack in the structure not to be a safety concern at all. The total cost for the installation of the bridge was about $14.2 million.
“A FIGG engineer concluded that there were no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge,” FIU was quoted as saying in a statement.
The brutal tragedy occurred just after three hours post meeting. The bridge weighing 950-ton collapsed, crushing vehicles which were waiting for the traffic signal light on the eight-lane roadway below. At least six people died as a result. More bodies are expected to be recovered out of the tragic bridge accident as police continue their efforts to remove four vehicles under it.
The names of the victims recovered as bodies were identified as Rolando Fraga Hernandez, Oswald Gonzalez and Alberto Arias, the Miami-Dade Police Department said in a statement. Another fourth victim, who died in hospital was identified by the police as Navarro Brown.
Miami police was not available for further comment.
More details revealed that the meeting was held after an engineer who was assigned to oversee the bridge, which linked the FIU campus with city of Weetwater, had informed and called a state official just two days before the collapse to report cracks.
Meanwhile, the voicemail message from FIGG’s lead engineer Denney Pate, including his assertion that the cracking posed no safety issue, was not retrieved until Friday, a day after the tragedy, according to the state transportation agency.
Pate did not immediately respond to the email queries.
In the message, the engineer Pate who was assigned to oversee the bridge said his team had observed “some cracking” at one end of the bridge and that repairs were warranted, “but from a safety perspective we don’t see that there’s any issue there, so we’re not concerned about it from that perspective.”
The city’s Transportation Department confirmed that the message was not heard of until Friday morning. Dick Kane, who is a spokesman for the agency, said in an email that its representative namely Alfredo Reyna, was a consultant having the role to keep the project going on schedule.
“While Reyna is a professional engineer, he does not have control over the project and relies on the expertise of the licensed engineer of record,” Mr. Kane had reportedly said.
“At no point during their communications”, the Transportation department said, “did Figg or any member of the F.I.U. design-build team ever communicate a life-safety issue.”