Crack identified before collapse
Whether rift contributed to Florida bridge tragedy is key to investigation
MIAMI— Hours before the collapse of a pedestrian bridge at Florida International University on Thursday, the engineering company for the bridge held a meeting to discuss a crack on the structure, according to a statement from the university released early Saturday.
The engineering company, Figg Bridge Engineers, delivered a technical presentation on the crack, and “concluded there were no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge,” the statement said.
Two days earlier, Figg’s lead engineer on the project, W. Denney Pate, left a voicemail message for the Transportation Department about “some cracking that’s been observed on the north end” of the bridge, according to a recording from the department released Friday.
At both the meeting and in his message, Pate said the cracking did not present any safety issues.
Whether the cracking contributed to the collapse, which killed at least six people, remains a key question in the investigation. Construction crews were working on a diagonal beam at the north end of the structure at or about the time of the collapse, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Early Saturday, recovery crews extracted the first two crushed vehicles and removed one more in the evening.
“We’ve discovered three bodies within those two vehicles,” Juan J. Perez, director of the Miami-Dade Police Department, said Saturday. Three vehicles remain trapped.