Discussion: New Pedestrian Bridge Collapses At Florida International University

CNN is reporting fatalities:

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You can almost see the fingers pointing between the architects and the construction company.

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Also MSNBC:

And the university’s engineering department, which apparently was heavily involved.

Building a light-duty bridge in an accessible space and then relocating it into place over a busy right-of-way seems like a sensible way to reduce costs. I wonder what went wrong here.

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That’s the real price of ignoring infrastructure for so many years. Its not about the money but the lives that are taken unnecessarily in lieu of a pragmatic response to crumbling old shit all around us. There’s gotten to be a surfeit of infrastructure projects that need upgrades, upkeep and routine maintenance. But, because it doesn’t have a political wedge to offer one side or another, it tends to get little to no attention to detail when major decisions are finally made to proceed. If this bridge did get a thorough review, with the kind of new cement or construction utilized, with enough adequate testing behind it, I’ll be surprised. Right now it just looks like someone wanted to take quick credit for something that turns out wasn’t worth spit…and tragically so. I think we need better engineers these days. If you use subpar materials however, all the engineers in the world aren’t gonna help matters.

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Holy f***, the construction company is mixed up with Manafort and Trump.

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The picture at the end of the article shows what is presumably a different completed bridge. It has cables supporting the span. The concrete slab for this bridge does not look like it could support so much weight above without some sort of cable support. Is there a picture of the completed bridge design somewhere?

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well it is florida

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Philadelphia Rail Transit (SEPTA) did something like that 25 years ago with no major problems. Each bridge was built next to the old bridge. On Friday evenings they started moving the bridge - by Monday morning the new bridge was in place. Maybe a dozen bridges were replaced.
Obviously someone effed up.

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also the price of reducing the budgets in the departments that are supposed to inspect these things

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From an article announcing the bridge’s launch the other day:

The 174-foot, 950-ton section of the bridge was built adjacent to Southwest Eight Street using Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) methods, which are being advanced at FIU’s Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC). This method of construction reduces potential risks to workers, commuters and pedestrians and minimizes traffic interruptions.
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“This project is an outstanding example of the ABC method,” said chair of FIU’s Civil & Environmental Engineering Department and director of FIU’s ABC-UTC Atorod Azizinamini, who is one of the world’s leading experts on Accelerated Bridge Construction. “Building the major element of the bridge – its main span superstructure – outside of the traveled way and away from busy Eighth Street is a milestone.”

Wow. What a debacle, and what a tragedy. This can’t be good for the “ABC method”.

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Kusher Companies LLC?

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That image (and more online) are computer renderings of the new bridge. There doesn’t seem to be any debris of a tower or cabling in the post collapse images.

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Any Trump company involvement here?

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…confirming the US slide into a shithole country. I’m very sorry about the deaths, and my heart goes out to their loved ones. Damn! We are not first class.

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It’s surely an “outstanding example of the ABC method”, but not in a good way.

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Cuban family’s construction company that donates massively to Trump and Rick Scott. PLUS…

"According to The Real Deal, Manafort was attempting to make real estate deals as recently as late July. He worked in conjunction with real estate fixer Brad Zackson to try to broker a deal between Chinese firm Pacific Construction Group — China’s largest privately owned builder — and a U.S. construction firm in need of a buyer. Miami-based Munilla Construction Management was reportedly in the running for a buyout. The firm won a $66M contract in 2016 to build a school at the base at Guantanamo Bay.

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/commercial-real-estate/9-real-estate-dealings-involving-ex-trump-campaign-chairman-paul-manafort-80940?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser"

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Like most college campuses today, FIU likely has wall to wall video coverage of the campus. It’s likely there will be video of the actual collapse.

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maybe they can build Dump’s wall and it can fall over on him at the dedication.

Well this is awful. And quite a spectacular failure.

There are a couple of basic possibilities here:

(1) The engineering was faulty from the start.

(2) Contractor botched the job – faulty materials or mistakes made in assembly.

(3) Deliberate corner-cutting to cut costs / inflate profits.

In other words incompetence, negligence, or outright malfeasance.

At this point, we just don’t know – it could be any of the three, or some combination of them.

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