Crack on Florida bridge was discussed just before collapse
Firm concluded there were ‘no safety concerns’
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.
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.
Saturday, recovery crews extracted three crushed vehicles.
“We’ve discovered three bodies within (the first two) vehicles,” Juan J. Perez, director of the MiamiDade Police Department, said Saturday.
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.
Three vehicles remain trapped.
One of the six victims, Navarro Brown, was part of the crew working on the bridge; he died at the hospital.
Another, Alexa Duran, was a freshman at FIU.
About 5:30 p.m., the gray Toyota 4Runner Duran had been driving was pulled from the rubble.
Her father, Orlando Duran, had arrived from London only minutes earlier.
Duran and a friend, FIU student Richard Humble, had been waiting at a red light when the bridge came crashing down.
“Her passenger walked away, God bless him,” Joseph Smitha, Orlando Duran’s brother-in-law, said. “But he’s going to have to live with that for the rest of his life.”