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TWO VEHICLES CONTAINING three bodies were removed from the wreckage of the Miami bridge which collapsed on Thursday as authorities continued to remove debris in attempt to recover at least four cars still trapped.
Police used cameras to locate five bodies in the ruble of the pedestrian bridge under construction at Florida International University (FIU). Authorities were carefully trying to get to remaining victims.
At least six people were killed when the structure fell onto a busy highway two days ago.
Authorities are continuing to investigate the collapse and whether cracking that was reported just before the span fell contributed to the bridge failure.
An engineer left a voicemail two days before the collapse to say some cracking had been found at one end of the concrete span, but the voicemail wasn’t picked up until after the collapse, Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) officials said yesterday.
The voicemail left on a landline wasn’t heard by a state DOT employee until Friday because the employee was out of the office on an assignment, the agency said in an email.
In a transcript released last night, Denney Pate with FIGG Bridge Group says the cracking would need repairs “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”.
FIU released a statement today saying representatives from the university and DOT met with a FIGG engineer for two hours on Thursday morning to discuss the cracking and determined there wasn’t a safety issue.
The bridge fell soon afterward.
FIU said:
The FIGG engineer of record delivered a technical presentation regarding the crack and concluded that there were no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge.
At a press conference, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board said they have just begun their investigation, and cannot yet say whether any cracking contributed to the collapse.
They also said workers were trying to strengthen a diagonal member on the bridge when it collapsed.
Richie Humble, who studies at FIU, was riding in a car under the pedestrian bridge when he heard a long creaking noise coming from the structure that spanned a busy Miami-area highway.
It sounded different from anything he had ever heard before. Humble said in a phone interview with The Associated Press:
I looked up, and in an instant, the bridge was collapsing on us completely. It was too quick to do anything about it.
Once Humble realized he was alive, he also realized that he could not get to Duran. He called to her but got no response. A group of men outside the car started yelling at him to try crawling through the rear window.
He couldn’t squeeze through because the window was crushed. The men outside grabbed a wooden plank and pried open the rear door to pull him free, he said.
“I was trying to get people to realize my friend was still in there,” he said.
He suffered cuts to his leg from glass and a slight fracture to a vertebra, but he was able to walk away from the scene.
Scheduled to open in 2019, the bridge would have provided safe passage over a canal and six lanes of traffic and created a showpiece architectural feature connecting the campus of FIU with the community of Sweetwater, where many students live.
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Meaningless Manifestos. Meaningless Slogans. Meaningless Promsises.
@David Field: True, but in terms of the wording, SF are making the most sense
@Thesaltyurchin: @Thesaltyurchin: ”Sinn Féin’s manifesto makes no mention of the migration system.”
They’re not making much sense on the issue of immigration, which affects nearly every other issue people worry about.
Immigration is the biggest issue for most people according to a recent Irish Independent poll.
@Dave Callaghan: it’s all false promises. Why would you vote for any major party, they promises the stars, but yet it’s cloudy 99% of the time. We need a change, but who do you pick. As a person in the 50s I’ve seen frist hand what FFG has turned this country into. I’m not voting SF either,they talked the talk, but aren’t willing to walk the walk.
Fianna fails could not be more vague or even half hearted. Looks like somebody literally phoned that in or wrote it on a post-it note
Ireland is the only country in Europe that allows asylum seekers to vote in local and European elections. An asylum seeker can register to vote without a passport or ID.
Department of Justice figures from last year confirm that 85% of asylum seekers entered Ireland last year without passport or ID. They can now vote in our elections.
Establishment parties are relying on the vote of asylum seekers as they know the majority of Irish people have turned against them. Asylum seekers and economic migrants have been granted the power to shape the future of the Irish political system.
This is an extremely sinister move by our government and is an attack on our democracy.
@JagTune: Great little rant about sinster moves by the government to attack our democracy.
The problem is that we actually had a referendum in 1999 on this, where the people of Ireland had the democratic right to decide on this issue, and 77.83% of us voted in favour of it.
Of course, this predated the rise of right-wing hysteria, it was back when we all had hope for the future, could make ends meet and didn’t look for an easy target to blame all the problems of the country on and instead held politicians to account, to actually sort out the problems themselves, rather than just looking for a scapegoat to blame them on..
@JagTune: Asylum seekers can not vote in European elections in Ireland. Further, asylum seekers can not apply for asylum without proving their identity, so there are no asylum seekers who’s identity has not been established voting in local elections in Ireland. Your post stinks of mis-truths and prejudice
Problem is they rarely deliver, they often knowingly lie, they are primarily driven by retaining their income and claiming as many expenses as possible and finally the guy in all councils with the most power is not elected so what’s the point.
FG are promising to fix all the things they broke, like some thug telling his beaten up wife that he won’t do it again, that it’ll be different from now on and that he really loves and cares deeply for. her.
Time to stop feeding the hand that bites us.
@Fidgenti: they cannot be smacking up the women now
What Fianna Fáil really meant to say was – underdelivering for Fine Gael in the past, underdelivering for Fine Gael in the future. Fine Gael really meant to say working with Fianna Fáil, working for Fianna Fáil. FG and FF should officially join forces and become one party. There is zero difference between them now, and they have been great bedfellows in government in destroying the country. A vote for FG is a vote for FF and vice versa.
Should all these things not have been done years ago, what have they all been doing for years gone bye
Who will get rid of the usc? They will get my vote
@Sean Money:
None of them so, and if any candidate in a local election tells you they can, you have found the biggest liar of them all
@P. J.: it makes me sad
@P. J.: What about any of the nazi people and far rights, surely they would?
There’s actual people out there that believe that waffle
Just make sure you do vote. Don’t take anything for granted.
Same old, same old … roll in 10 years, rinse, repeat.
Only party getting my Vote is the ones going to stop our country getting invaded .
Hooray everything will be fixed finally!!!!
When Palestine becomes more important than Portlaise – you know parties have no real agenda except jumping on trends. SF’s biggest revelation this time around has been them cosying up and bending over backwards with the Islamists.
@DCQ: Yeah, that’s why they don’t get my vote this time. Independents it will be.
@Kush OMeara: Is that you Mattie?
There’s no need for The Journal to read it to us and there’s no need for anyone else to read it either because all we’ll read is spoof.
So FF are going to mandate gender targets for board appointments in local authorities. Well they have just lost one vote with that silly proposal and hopefully will lose more if they continue down the road of gender (and other) quotas.
Manifiestos are spoofery. That said, despite polls making a lot of presumptions on the alleged fall in support for Sinn Fein, I think a lot of younger voters 18-34 will probably vote for them in the impending elections and a future general election.
Simply because they have no historic baggage about them, attacks on Sinn Fein from FFFG about being the past political wing of the IRA, means as much to them as someone talking about FFFG actions during the civil war, because they didn’t live through any of it, to them its all just boring history.
I personally doubt that Sinn Fein in government will deliver on any of the things they promise in opposition, and suspect that they will claim they need at least two terms to fix the mess left to them, but I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
@Dvsespaña: It’s not the past IRA history that is causing the drop in support for SF. It’s their constant flip flopping on all major issues so no one knows where they stand on anything.
@Nodon: Congratulations on arguing against a point and claim that I didn’t make..
@Ulysses 31:
Thankfully there is so many candidates of the hard right variety that their support will be spread thin, very few, if any will be elected and the majority of people will be able to ignore them.
@Ulysses 31: Nonsense.
@Ulysses 31: It begins with we need to stop and repatriate international protection applicants, then all of a sudden it’s we need to stop unlimited economic migrants because they are the problem, then before you know it, it’s ordinary citizens being stopped in the street by psychopathic bureaucrats and told their papers are not in order, and them sending anyone that disagrees to re-education camps…
Then eventually, people begin to wonder as they have at various points throughout history, how and when exactly did we allow these vicious lunatics to take control?
@P. J.: if people use their transfers properly their vote will consolidate. Hopefully they will do and the results will be a better reflection of public opinion.
@Ulysses 31: There lies the problem, because there isn’t a right-wing lite, or a limited form of fascism. It is like every other ideology, a self perpetuating bureaucracy that compounds itself.
In Germany in the 1930′s, Hitler was saying to voters that they needed to help him rebuild Germany for Germans.
The Germany that was destroyed physically and financially by losing WW1 and being forced to pay reparations, he told them that with their support in voting for his national socialist party he would take back control of Germany and regain its former glory…
On the surface, this appealed to a lot of ordinary German people that were struggling to make ends meet, categorise people by race or ethnicity, expel from Germany everyone not aryan German, and seize the assets and businesses of foreigners
Hitler kept the crazy talk about genocide, slaughtering the Jews, the disabled, homosexuals, gypsies and anyone not aryan German, to his inner circle with whom he had tried to overthrow the German government through an earlier insurrection in 1923, at least he did until they finally held the reins of power, by then it was too late and the die was cast and the rest is history…
Fine Gael are going to place bees on the roof of local authority buildings where practical.
Do they mean hives? And presumably that’s only possible on flat roofs. And they’d need trained Bee keepers. And a risk assessment cos people might get stung.
Don’t think it’s practical.
But I could be wrong.
We read the manifestos so you dont.
Not one mention of crime or antisocial behaviour. HOW on earth are local councillors more concerned about Palestine, a country over which a local councillor will have absolutely ZERO power to help or influence outside of virtue signalling by waving a flag around outside city hall, than the absolute state of our inner cities when it comes to open drug dealing, antisocial behaviour and general crime. This is an absolute circus.
can we have our country back please ..that’s all
Not easy to predict results on this occasion .
Seems that they are all striving to do these things nothing concrete so basically bs
Which party should I vote for to control migration into our country.
SF don’t care.
Ff and FG want us to take migrants that arrived illegally from other countries.
Which party to vote for in the EU elections..
The Coalition parties have done massive damage to Democracy in Ireland, they have failed the Irish people who have lost all trust in all arms of the State & no longer swallow the lies & false promises. They brand those who question their actions as Far Right, deflecting from their failures, as they know that things are about to change drastically in Ireland. They must solely take responsibility for this & why people are seeking extremes. The Opposition are no better, in fact nobody sees anybody in Dail Eirinn as leaders or providing leadership. The fact is, it’s now too late for the Coalition parties, the days of people giving them another chance is gone. The Referendums were a warning & the vote went unheeded by our Political Classes, too late now.
Ireland’s maritime climate is one topic among many within the umbrella of the Earth science of climate, just as geology and biology cover many topics within their respective research areas.
The idea of making climate one thing, in this case, long-term weather to suit computer modelling, reflects poorly on society, from politicians to the electorate.
An element of social politics would be to curtail the influence of scientific method modelling. Because that subculture cannot be inspirational, of necessity, it must be hysterical and dire, so a creative and productive society does not need it.
@Gerald Kelleher: Doesn’t really matter if one believes or not. There are ways to heat your house, some of them make sense and some don’t. The path of reason should be the journey we’re on, but people are terrified of change (the only certainty apart from death) and so are incapable moving past almost any societal road block. In Ireland its evident throughout our society, with nearly all of our infrastructures suffering generational neglect.
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