Crack on bridge was discussed before collapse
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 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.
The construction manager on the project and representatives from the university and the state Transportation Department attended the two-hour meeting, which was led by Figg’s lead engineer on the project, W. Denney Pate.
Two days earlier, Pate left a voice mail 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.
The Transportation Department said the message was not heard until Friday morning.
At no point during their communications, the department said, “did Figg or any member of the FIU design-build team ever communicate a life-safety issue.”
Whether the cracking contributed to the collapse, which killed at least six people in their cars on the eight-lane street below the bridge, 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 information the National Transportation Safety Board provided to local members of Congress. Workers were tightening cables that ran inside the beam.
Such adjustments are common in concrete designs to fine-tune the structure once it is in place. In this case, however, it was not clear whether the cabletightening was routine or an urgent undertaking in response to the discovery of the crack in the bridge.
Witnesses said the collapse appeared to start near the north end. But no one, including the NTSB, has so far placed any blame for the collapse on the cables or cable-tightening work.
By Saturday evening, recovery crews extracted three crushed vehicles from under the rubble.
At least three vehicles remain trapped under the bridge. The number of known victims had not changed, said Maurice Kemp, deputy mayor of MiamiDade County.
One of the six victims, Navarro Brown, was part of the crew working on the bridge and died at a hospital. The Police Department identified one victim in the first vehicle, Roland Fraga Hernandez, and two in the second vehicle, Oswald Gonzalez, 57, and Alberto Arias, 53. Another, Alexa Duran, who is presumed dead in her car, was a freshman at FIU.