Obama touted deadly FIU bridge suffered from design flaws, feds say

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-
dade/article221706575.html

Design flaws led to cracking in the Florida International University
pedestrian bridge that collapsed during construction earlier this year,
federal investigators conclude in a brief update issued Thursday.

The two-page report by the National Transportation Safety Board stops
short of blaming the design errors for the bridge’s collapse, which killed
six people, including an FIU student. The board’s findings on the cause of
the bridge’s catastrophic failure on March 15 are expected to come in a
full report next year.

But the investigative update bolsters conclusions reached by independent
bridge engineering experts consulted by the Miami Herald and others
posting in online professional forums. Three experts consulted by the
Herald separately concluded that design flaws at the north end of the
unfinished bridge’s 174-foot span over Southwest Eighth Street were likely
a leading contributor to the collapse.

The NTSB brief echoes what the experts told the Herald after examining
publicly available engineering calculations and plans for the bridge:
Design errors meant that a key structural connection in the span, a point
at which a diagonal strut identified as Number 11 met the deck of the
bridge span and a vertical column, was too weak to support the large
forces it was supposed to withstand.

Experts from the Federal Highway Administration who examined the plans and
calculations for the NTSB concluded that the FIU team’s engineers, who
worked for Tallahassee-based FIGG Bridge Group, underestimated the
structural load on that section while overestimating the strength of the
connection.

Cracks that appeared at a critical structural connection point after the
unorthodox bridge span was lifted into place, dismissed by FIU bridge
design engineer W. Denney Pate as posing no safety threat, were
“consistent with the identified errors,” the NTSB report says without
further elaboration.

The experts consulted by the Herald said the cracks were concerning enough
that they should have prompted a stop to work on the bridge and a
redirecting of traffic below the span for a thorough evaluation, something
that available records suggest did not happen.

Instead, after a morning meeting called to discuss the cracking, a crew
was sent out to tighten steel support rods that ran inside the Number 11
strut — possibly an effort to close the cracks, the independent experts
say. Traffic continued to flow below the span, which collapsed without
warning while that “post-tensioning” work was going on, killing one crew
member and crushing motorists stopped at a red light beneath.

Because the NTSB has barred release of critical records surrounding the
accident, including any record of the meeting, it’s unclear just why Pate
and FIGG concluded the cracks were not a hazard or precisely why the crews
were told to tighten the rods. That’s critical information for determining
why the bridge fell, said David Beck, a New Hampshire engineer who has
assisted the Herald’s reporting without charge.

“I am disappointed they haven’t addressed the issue of the post-tensioning
of member number 11,” Beck said.


--
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