Voicemail on bridge cracks wasn’t picked up — officials
MIAMI (AP) — An engineer left a voicemail two days before a catastrophic bridge failure here to report that some cracking had been found at one end of the concrete span, but the voicemail was not picked up until after the collapse, Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) officials said last Friday.
The voicemail left on a landline was not heard by a state DOT employee until Friday because the employee was out of the office on an assignment, the agency said in an email.
In a transcript released last Friday night, Denney Pate with FIGG Bridge Group said the cracking would need repairs “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 bridge collapsed last Thursday, killing at least six people. Authorities are slowly removing the debris, looking for more victims.
At a news conference last Friday night, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said they have just begun their investigation and cannot yet say whether any cracking contributed to the collapse. They also said workers were trying to strengthen a diagonal member on the pedestrian bridge near the Florida International University (FIU) when it collapsed.
Robert Accetta, the investigator-incharge for the NTSB, said crews were applying post-tensioning force, but investigators are not sure if that is what caused the bridge to fall.
In a news release late Friday, FIGG Bridge Engineers said it “continues to work diligently” to determine the cause of the collapse, and is examining the steps its team has taken.
“The evaluation was based on the best available information at that time and indicated that there were no safety issues,” it said, as it also asked for time to accurately determine what led to the accident.