The engineers and designers of a bridge have been speaking out against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) findings that engineers should have been aware that the bridge was going to collapse. The Florida International University pedestrian bridge was supposed to allow college students to cross a busy roadway safely. FIGG Bridge Engineers are accused of failing to assess the risk of lengthening cracks just prior to the bridge’s collapse on March 15th, 2018. The bridge collapse claimed the lives of a construction worker and five motorists.
ABC News reports that the engineers failed to recognize the dangerous signs that the bridge was about to collapse.
According to the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, engineers failed to recognize potentially dangerous signs that the bridge was failing just hours before the fatal collapse.
The collapse occurred on March 15th, 2018, crashing down on motorists stopped at the light beneath the bridge. A total of six people lost their lives in the collapse.
The report, which was released last week, stated that a concrete truss on the bridge developed numerous deep and wide structural cracks. These cracks jeopardized the stability of the bridge, leading to the collapse.
According to OSHA, the engineer with FIGG Bridge Engineers should have recognized the danger and immediately closed the bridge and blocked off traffic below the structure. The cracks were evaluated over two days prior to the morning of the collapse, but the engineer on record stated that the cracks did not pose any safety concerns.
The FIGG Bridge Engineers state that the OSHA report is factually inaccurate. The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting its own investigation.
