Bridge victim’s uncle decries ‘incompetence’
MIAMI — As crews began removing bodies from beneath a collapsed pedestrian bridge on Saturday, a victim’s uncle raged against what he called the “complete incompetence” and “colossal failure” that allowed people to drive beneath the unfinished span.
“Why did they have to build this monstrosity in the first place?” said an anguished Joe Smitha, whose niece, Alexa Duran, was crushed in Thursday’s collapse at Florida International University. “Then, they decided to stress-test this bridge while traffic was running underneath it?”
Authorities said six people were killed when the structure fell onto a busy six-lane road connecting the campus to the community of Sweetwater. Crews removed two cars Saturday morning and said they found three bodies. Late in the day, they recovered a third car, and Saturday night they said they believed all victims had been found.
The Miami-Dade Police Department confirmed the names of four victims.
Rolando Fraga Hernandez and his gold Jeep Cherokee were pulled from the wreckage Saturday. Later, the bodies of Oswald Gonzalez, 57, and Alberto Arias, 54, were found inside a white Chevy truck.
Navarro Brown was pulled from the rubble Thursday and later died at the hospital.
Authorities have not released Duran’s name, but her family has said she died. The FIU freshman was studying political science.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has confirmed that crews were applying what’s known as “post-tensioning force” on the bridge before the failure. Authorities are investigating whether cracking that was reported just before the concrete span fell contributed to the horror.
Two days before the collapse, an engineer with the design firm left a voicemail to say some cracking had been found at one end of the concrete span, but the voicemail wasn’t picked up until after the collapse, Florida Department of Transportation officials said on Friday. In a transcript released Friday night, Denney Pate with FIGG Bridge Group said the cracking would need repairs, but the company didn’t think it was a safety issue.
In a statement late Friday, FIGG said it “continues to work diligently” to determine the cause of the collapse.
Scheduled to open in 2019, the bridge was to provide passage over a canal and six lanes of traffic, a showpiece architectural feature connecting the campus with Sweetwater. The $14.2-million US project was supposed to take advantage of a faster, cheaper and safer method of bridge-building.