“ An engineer reported cracks on a newly installed pedestrian bridge two days before it collapsed on a busy roadway here, killing at least six people, state officials said on Friday.
The report, by the lead engineer with the company in charge of the bridge’s design, was made in a voice mail message left for a Florida Department of Transportation employee. That employee was out of the office, however, and did not receive it until Friday, a day after the collapse.
The cracking was on the north end of the span but the company did not consider it a safety concern, according to a recording of the message released by the Transportation Department.
“We’ve taken a look at it and, uh, obviously some repairs or whatever will have to be done, 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,” said the engineer, W. Denney Pate. “Although obviously the cracking is not good and something’s going to have to be, you know, done to repair that.”
The transportation department said on Friday that “the responsibility to identify and address life-safety issues and properly communicate them is the sole responsibility of the F.I.U. design-build team,” referring to Florida International University, which commissioned the bridge.”