At Least Six People Are Dead after A Pedestrian Bridge Collapsed in Miami on Thursday

A pedestrian walkway, still mid-construction, collapsed on a busy, seven-lane road in Miami on March 15, 2018. As of this writing, at least eight cars were crushed under the bridge, and at least six people have been declared dead. Ten people have sought medical treatment for injuries. At least one of them is believed to be the sixth victim.

Rescue and recovery efforts are still underway, and law enforcement and engineers are on-scene in an attempt to learn just what caused the bridge failure.

Built to withstand a hurricane

Ironically, the Florida International University (“FIU”)-Sweetwater pedestrian bridge was intended to help keep people safer. Last year, a student was fatally struck by a car nearby, and the goal of the bridge was to eliminate that threat for the future by giving students a way to safely access both the dorms and the campus. Per CNN, “it cost $14.2 million to build and was funded as part of a $19.4 million grant from the US Department of Transportation. It was designed to withstand the strength of a Category 5 hurricane, the fact sheet said, and was supposed to last for more than 100 years.”

The bridge spanned 30 feet and weighed about 950 tons. As TIME explains, “The bridge was also unusually heavy, employing concrete elements such as trusses and a concrete roof, rather than lighter weight steel.” (The concrete was entirely self-cleaning).

The bridge was also unique in its construction: instead of installing the main support tower first, the walkway section of the bridge, along with its cover, was built on the side of the road, TIME reports. This allowed traffic to flow unimpeded by the work. This streamlined, “pre-fab” process is called Accelerated Bridge Construction (“ABC”) technology. The Federal Highway Administration claims ABC technology allows for improvements in the areas of:

• Safety
• Quality
• Durability
• Social costs
• Environmental impacts

You can read more about the process here.

On Saturday, March 10^th, the bridge was installed. At the time of the collapse, workers were on the bridge tightening loose cables. FIU President Mark Rosenberg told NBC Miami that earlier tests did not indicate that a collapse was imminent.

Multiple companies were involved in some aspect of the bridge’s construction: FIGG, a company out of Tallahassee; Munilla Construction (“MCM”), based in Miami; Bolton Perez and Associates, a consulting firm out of Miami; and Colorado-based BDI Engineering, which provided structural monitoring.

A history of failed inspections and bridge collapses

Both FIGG and MCM have been involved in projects which failed. FIGG was fined in 2012 by the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry, for four separate violations. The Department claimed “the builder did not get a manufacturer’s written consent before it modified a girder that was used during construction and ultimately failed on June 21, sending a 90-ton piece of concrete crashing to the ground.”

MCM had been sued less than two weeks ago “by a TSA employee who was hurt at the Fort Lauderdale airport. The employee’s lawyer alleges that a makeshift bridge MCM built for workers to use while the company does construction at the airport broke under his weight.” TIME reports that the company faced $50,000 in fines for 11 safety violations over the last five years.

There is still so much to learn about the FIU-Sweetwater pedestrian bridge collapse. Harris Lowry Manton LLP is holding the victims, their families, and the first responders on the scene in our hearts, and hoping there are more rescues than recoveries.

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