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Engineer of Florida Bridge Reported Cracks Days Before Collapse

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The state Department of Transportation said the lead engineer had left it a voice mail message warning of cracking on the newly installed bridge.
MIAMI — An engineer reported cracks on a newly installed pedestrian bridge two days before it collapsed on a busy roadway here, killing at least six people, state officials said on Friday.
The report, by the lead engineer with the company in charge of the bridge’s design, was made in a voice mail message for a Florida Department of Transportation employee. That employee was out of the office, however, and did not receive it until Friday, a day after the collapse.
The cracking was on the north end of the span, according to the message, but the company did not consider it a safety concern, according to a transcript released by the transportation department.
“We’ve taken a look at it and, uh, obviously some repairs or whatever will have to be done, but from a safety perspective we don’t see that there’s any issue there so we’re not concerned about it from that perspective,” said the engineer, W. Denney Pate. “Although obviously the cracking is not good and something’s going to have to be, you know, done to repair that.”
A spokesman for Mr. Pate’s company, Figg Bridge Group, did not immediately comment on the transcript.
“The responsibility to identify and address life-safety issues and properly communicate them is the sole responsibility of the F. I. U. design-build team,” the transportation department said, referring to Florida International University, the owner of the bridge project. “At no point during any of the communications above did Figg or any member of the F. I. U. design-build team ever communicate a life-safety issue.”

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