Florida school says it was aware of bridge cracks before fatal collapse

Engineersand state and university officials met hours before a newly builtpedestrian bridge collapsed, killing six people, but concluded that acrack in the bridge was not a safety concern, Florida InternationalUniversity said yesterday.The two-hour meeting on Thursday involvedFIGG, which is the private contractor for the overall design of thebridge, the school, Florida Department of Transportation officials andMunilla Construction Management (MCM), which installed the bridge.AFIGG engineer “concluded there were no safety concerns and the crack didnot compromise the structural integrity of the bridge,” FIU said in astatement yesterday.About three hours after the meeting concluded,the 950-tonne, $14.2mn bridge fell down, crushing vehicles stopped at atraffic light on the eight-lane roadway below.At least six people, including three whose bodies were recovered yesterday, were killed.Police said four vehicles are believed to be still under the collapsed bridge and more bodies may be recovered from the rubble.Newsof the meeting followed a revelation late on Friday that the engineeroverseeing the bridge, which linked the FIU campus with the city ofSweetwater, had called a state official two days before the collapse toreport cracks.However, the voicemail message from FIGG’s leadengineer Denney Pate, including his assertion that the cracking posed nosafety issue, was not retrieved until Friday, a day after the tragedy,according to the state transportation agency.Pate did not immediately respond to email queries from Reuters.Inthe message, Pate said his team had observed “some cracking” at one endof the bridge and that repairs were warranted, “but from a safetyperspective we don’t see that there’s any issue there, so we’re notconcerned about it from that perspective.”He added: “Obviously the cracking is not good and something’s going to have to be, ya know, done to repair that.”