2 cars, 3 bodies removed from collapsed Miami bridge debris
MIAMI (AP) — Two vehicles containing three bodies were removed from the wreckage of a collapsed Miami bridge Saturday as authorities continued to remove debris in attempt to extract at least four cars still trapped since the span fell two days earlier.
The recovery came after police used cameras to locate five bodies in the rubble of a pedestrian bridge under construction at Florida International University. Authorities were carefully trying to get to remaining victims. At least six people were killed when the structure fell onto a busy highway Thursday.
"Right now we're just chipping away," said Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez.
Perez said DNA evidence, fingerprints and family photos might be needed to identify the victims.
Meanwhile authorities are continuing to investigate the collapse and whether cracking that was reported just before the span fell contributed to the bridge failure.
An engineer left a voicemail two days before the collapse to say some cracking had been found at one end of the concrete span, but the voicemail wasn't picked up until after the collapse, Florida Department of Transportation officials said Friday.
The voicemail left on a landline wasn't 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 Friday night, Denney Pate with FIGG Bridge Group says 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."
On Saturday, FIU released a statement saying representatives from the university and DOT met with a FIGG engineer for two hours Thursday morning to discuss the cracking and determined there wasn't a safety issue. The bridge fell soon afterward.
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