DARRIN BELL1, a left wing cartoonist living in Los Angeles CA – some 2,336 miles as the crow flies from Miami FL2 – has decided he knows why the FIU pedestrian bridge over the Tamiami Trail (US 41/SW 8th Street) collapsed, crushing several cars, killing six and injuring 10 more people.3.
According to Bell, the collapse was caused by the technique used to create the elevated walkway.
- I confess that despite our political differences, I read his Candorville comic daily. His main character, Lemont Brown is supposed to be a web “journalist.” As a former newspaper reporter and editor, his character’s published biases go against my sensibilities as much as the cartoonist’s politics. Still, Bell/Brown provides a window into leftist mentality.
I failed to see any hint that Bell has any risk management experience, or that he has any local connection to the Miami tragedy; I suspect he got his information from others of the same mind; forget facts, they aren’t important.
As a risk management practitioner, let me suggest to Bell/Brown that the tragedy could have been avoided if someone had been risk conscious and used common sense.
Bell/Brown may be correct in assuming ”accelerated bridge construction” (ABC) was to blame for the collapse, but it was not the cause of preventable death or injury.
According to the Miami Herald (ibid.),
- the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) said late Friday (March 16) that two days before the bridge collapsed, the lead engineer responsible for the project had left a voice mail with an agency worker saying there was cracking in the structure.
The FDOT worker did not receive the voice mail until Friday, the agency said in a statement that included a transcript of the message from Denney Pate with FIGG Bridge Group, which engineered the structure.
“A crack in the bridge does not necessarily mean it’s unsafe,” Robert Accetta, the lead NTSB investigator, said during a briefing Friday night on the Florida International University campus.
HOW THE ACCIDENT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED
The tragedy could have been avoided simply BY CLOSING THE STREET while the walkway as being tested or the cables tightened.
If the street was closed during minimal traffic hours, with well-marked detours, traffic flow might have been disrupted for a few hours and there would have been only one fatality, that of bridge worker Navaro Brown who died in the collapse of the span.
As it is, the heavily traveled roadway will be closed for an undetermined duration.
Again citing the Miami Herald,
- Florida’s transportation department, in its Friday statement, said it never received a request from FIU or its contractors to close the road for stress testing. FDOT said it had issued a blanket permit allowing for two-lane closures effective from January through April, and that “Per standard safety procedure, FDOT would issue a permit for partial or full road closure if deemed necessary and requested by the FIU design build team’’ or its construction inspector.
What caused the structure to fall remains, as of this writing, “to be determined.”
The Miami Herald notes that
- Federal investigators also confirmed an earlier report from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio that bridge workers were tightening two tension cables inside a support truss located at the northern end of the structure. The work was supposed to strengthen the truss.
Rubio posted a message on Twitter shortly after leaving the scene of the accident late Thursday: “The cables that suspend the #Miami bridge had loosened & the engineering firm ordered that they be tightened. They were being tightened when it collapsed today.”
The cable tightening, along with the reported cracks, added to the growing list of issues that the NTSB will examine. Shortly after the bridge collapsed, local officials also reported the structure had undergone a “stress test.” It’s also too early to say what, if any, role that might have played in the failure.
U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo said he questioned why cars would be allowed to travel under a bridge undergoing a stress test. He said he spoke to experts about it and, “They have all told me they’ve never conducted stress tests on a bridge with anyone underneath.”
A little research into past ABC projects failed to turn up any failures similar to the Miami collapse.
However, according to the HNTB web site4 – a company that builds such structures – there are at least 11 successful ABC projects in the U.S.
CBS4 News5 has learned two of firms that built the (FIU) bridge have been accused of unsafe practices.
Unfortunately for Bell/Brown, nothing supports the claim that the collapse was caused by the technology used to create the walkway.
I’m surprised Bell didn’t manage to blame President Trump for the accident.
Sources
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrin_Bell
2. http://tinyurl.com/y9objnkd
3. http://tinyurl.com/y7ypu8oo
4. http://tinyurl.com/ybw8y3bl
5. http://tinyurl.com/ya4u5qby
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
BCPLANNER: Comments on Check facts
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