During a hearing Tuesday on last year’s deadly Florida International University pedestrian footbridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the bridge’s “catastrophic failure” stemmed from a flawed design with “significant errors.”
All of the major parties involved in the project — from the university to the Florida Department of Transportation and the project’s engineers and contractors — came in for harsh criticism during the public hearing, something they have largely avoided as the NTSB conducted a closed-doors investigation over the past 19 months while victims and their families demanded answers.
The NTSB determined that FIU, FDOT, as well as the project’s design-build team and inspectors failed to exercise independent judgment, or even common sense, in leaving the busy road underneath the bridge open while a construction crew performed emergency work. Six people died on March 15, 2018, when the 950-ton span collapsed onto cars idling on Tamiami Trail. Ten people were injured.
Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.
