Pittsburgh was likely negligent in Fern Hollow Bridge collapse

Paula Reed Ward is usually a pretty good reporter, but this is a facepalm moment on a couple points.

Nearly five months after the Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh’s Frick Park collapsed,[1] and almost a month after experts expressed alarm over the bridge’s last inspection report,[2] we get this:

Observations in the inspection report that sounded scariest — 50% section loss on some bolts, all four legs having transverse stiffeners that were completely rusted through and severe corrosion and holes — were not enough to warrant recommendations of immediate action.

“After the fact, it’s easy to say something went wrong here,” [Penn State University engineering professor Kostas] Papakonstantinou said, adding that’s not necessarily the case.[3]

Um, yes, something did go wrong here. The fucking bridge collapsed. Which makes Kostas Papakonstantinou a complete dipshit for trying to defend it and, pretty obviously, a glaring example of the problem with bridge inspections that let this slide. Here are some experts that Ward didn’t talk to:

Several experts who agreed to review the reports at the request of the Post-Gazette said they were startled by the quarter-century of inaction in the face of a bridge that was clearly approaching the end stages of its life.

Questions were raised by the experts not just about the city’s lack of action to repair the bridge, but the roles the private inspection firms and PennDOT — the state agency that oversees all bridge inspections — played in those decisions.

David Beck, a structural engineer in New Hampshire with more than a half century of experience in design and construction, said: “It’s just like the [Surfside, Florida] condo collapse that killed nearly 100 people: Maintenance just didn’t get done.”[4]

Indeed, it seems that year after year, recommendations, including some for action to be taken immediately, were made to protect the bridge from structural failure. These recommended steps—the earliest involved a fucking paint job—were never carried out.[5]

Taken all together, the repairs that could have been carried out since 1997 ranged from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands. Now, the cost of replacing the entire bridge: $23.5 million, and counting.

“There’s no question in my mind that [the city] dropped the ball and refused to invest money in maintenance on this bridge and that led to its failure,” said Hota GangaRao, an engineering professor and director of the Constructed Facilities Center at West Virginia University.

The state requires that inspectors record the status of each recommendation, and with each new report, inspectors take note of the city’s inaction. For nearly every recommendation, the inspectors wrote the same refrain: “Work not planned.”[6]

The headline on Ward’s article refers to “experts” plural. But it appears Ward interviewed exactly two so-called ‘experts’ who both said pretty much the same asinine thing.[7] And she apparently did not speak to, nor does she acknowledge, any of the experts who have expressed alarm to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.[8]

And it flatly does not help to order reinspections on other bridges[9] if the City of Pittsburgh will be as negligent with those reports as it appears to have been with the Fern Hollow Bridge. I am most definitely not reassured.

  1. [1]Ed Blazina et al., “‘A boom, then a monster sound’: 10 hurt after bridge over Pittsburgh’s Frick Park collapses,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 28, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2022/01/28/pittsburgh-bridge-collapse-forbes-braddock-avenue-point-breeze-squirrel-hill/stories/202201280075
  2. [2]Sam D. Hamill, “Fern Hollow Bridge was severely decaying before collapse, 2021 report indicates,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 19, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2022/05/19/fern-hollow-bridge-inspection-2021-report-severely-decaying-rust-corrosion-penndot/stories/202205190154
  3. [3]Paula Reed Ward, “Fern Hollow Bridge inspection troubling but did not suggest imminent danger, experts say,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, June 18, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/fern-hollow-bridge-inspection-had-troubling-findings-but-nothing-suggesting-collapse-was-imminent-experts-say/
  4. [4]Sean D. Hamill, “Decades of Neglect,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 18, 2022, https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/fern-hollow-bridge-pittsburgh-inspection-reports-repairs-collapse-engineer-neglect/
  5. [5]Sean D. Hamill, “Decades of Neglect,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 18, 2022, https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/fern-hollow-bridge-pittsburgh-inspection-reports-repairs-collapse-engineer-neglect/
  6. [6]Sean D. Hamill, “Decades of Neglect,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 18, 2022, https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/fern-hollow-bridge-pittsburgh-inspection-reports-repairs-collapse-engineer-neglect/
  7. [7]Paula Reed Ward, “Fern Hollow Bridge inspection troubling but did not suggest imminent danger, experts say,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, June 18, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/fern-hollow-bridge-inspection-had-troubling-findings-but-nothing-suggesting-collapse-was-imminent-experts-say/
  8. [8]Sam D. Hamill, “Fern Hollow Bridge was severely decaying before collapse, 2021 report indicates,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 19, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2022/05/19/fern-hollow-bridge-inspection-2021-report-severely-decaying-rust-corrosion-penndot/stories/202205190154; Sean D. Hamill, “Decades of Neglect,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 18, 2022, https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/fern-hollow-bridge-pittsburgh-inspection-reports-repairs-collapse-engineer-neglect/
  9. [9]Julia Felton, “Mayor Gainey says Pittsburgh will reinspect all city-owned bridges in poor condition,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, March 8, 2022, https://triblive.com/local/mayor-gainey-says-pittsburgh-will-reinspect-all-city-owned-bridges-in-poor-condition/

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.