National Post (National Edition)
Miami bridge collapse: ‘I heard what sounded like a sonic boom’
VEHICLES CRUSHED, OFFICIALS ‘FEARING THE WORST’
MIAMI • A newly installed pedestrian crossway over a busy Miami thoroughfare at the Florida International University campus collapsed Thursday afternoon, crushing cars and killing several people, local officials said.
In what one witness called a chaotic scene, rescue workers pored over the rubble, trying to find trapped drivers. Doctors in white coats streamed out of a nearby ambulatory care centre and the university’s medical school, while one driver, dressed in pink hospital scrubs, crawled out of her mangled car.
At a news conference, local officials said eight people had been transported to a hospital and that eight vehicles had been trapped under the bridge. Some of the vehicles were stopped at a red light at the time the bridge came down.
“This pedestrian bridge weighs several hundred tonnes, and it is still on the roadway,” Lt. Alejandro Camacho, a spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol, said. “I don’t know what is underneath.”
Officials did not confirm the number of dead during the afternoon news conference, but Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told local television affiliates in Miami that six to 10 people may have died.
“I can tell you that having talked shortly after the collapse to the university president, to the mayor, to the chief of police,” Nelson said, “they are fearing the worst, that there are going to be maybe as many as six deaths, and another number that I heard, it could be upwards of 10.”
Camacho confirmed that multiple fatalities were expected. “There are going to be several,” he said, “based on the amount of vehicles that are underneath.”
Speaking at the news conference, Juan Perez, director of the Miami-Dade Police Department, said: “We’re not confirming any deaths. What Sen. Nelson says, I cannot answer to.”
As soon as the search and rescue operation was over, Perez said, the police homicide bureau would take the lead. He said the state attorney was also “on standby and waiting to come in and work this case with us.”
Jonathan Muñoz, 21, a junior premedical major, said he had just driven under the pedestrian bridge and entered a nearby parking garage when he heard a loud bang. He thought he had hit something as he looked for a parking spot, so he pulled over and checked his car.
Minutes later, he got a frantic call from his girlfriend, who had been with him in the car moments earlier.
“Jonathan, the bridge collapsed,” she said. He ran over and saw a construction worker with blood coming out of his neck. “When we got there, cars were honking nonstop,” he said. “It was a scene in a movie.”
He said the cars must have been stopped at a red light, because so many cars were stuck: “It was one car after another.”
Another student, Kurt Baker, had just exited the highway. “I heard what sounded to me like a sonic boom from an aircraft which shook the ground below,” said Baker, a junior studying mechanical engineering.
The bridge had a span of about 174 feet over Southwest Eighth Street, a major thoroughfare that crosses the county, connecting the FIU campus in western MiamiDade County with the city of Sweetwater.
It had been assembled offsite and moved to the location Saturday. The bridge was still under construction and was not expected to open to the public until the end of the year, a university official said.
The National Transportation Safety Board said that it would investigate. Munilla Construction Management, which was building the bridge, promised in a statement that it would investigate what went wrong and would cooperate with any other inquiry. The engineering firm for the project, FIGG Bridge Engineers, said that it would also co-operate.
“Barring somebody using it that wasn’t supposed to be there, it’s either an engineering problem or it’s a construction problem, but that’s why you bring in the professionals,” Nelson told CBS Miami.
He said he had spoken to the university president, Mark B. Rosenberg, and “you can imagine the near shock that he was almost in.”