At least four dead in Florida university bridge collapse

BBC: At least four dead in Florida university bridge collapse
"At least four people are dead and 10 others are injured after a bridge collapsed near Florida International University in Miami, officials say.

Rescue teams were still searching the rubble on Thursday night for victims trapped beneath the buckled footbridge.

The structure toppled over an eight-lane motorway on Thursday afternoon, crushing at least eight vehicles, according to police"​

A tale of two Floridas.

1. Flordia, 1969, July 16. Kennedy Space Centre, Merritt Island. The 45,700 tonne, 363 foot (110m) Apollo 11 manned-rocket blasts off for a mission to land the first two men on the Moon and to return them safely to the Earth. One giant leap for mankind.
   
   
2. Florida, 2018, March 15. Florida International University, Miami. A 950-ton (862-tonne), 174-foot (53m) pedestrial foot-bridge collapses trapping vehicles and crushing people to death. One disastrous reality-check that exposed the criminal incompetence of the Flordia International University authorities and all who designed and approved this "first of a kind" bridge.

We can have the smart successful high-achieving kind of world that can do great things or we have the disastrous kind of world. Here's what Florida needs to do to be great again.


Mark B. Rosenburg - accused herein of "involuntary manslaughter"

I am calling for the arrest of President of Florida International University Mark B. Rosenburg on a charge of involuntary manslaughter but in addition, I am calling for those with more direct responsibility for the design and the planning approval of this "first of a kind" bridge to face the same charge.

I am calling for the immediate dismissal of all 13 members of the Board of Trustees of Florida International University.

Florida International University needs a new Board of Trustees and a new president who must root out the incompetent officers of the university who are responsible for this catastrophe.

The Governor of the State of Florida and the Board of Governors of the State University System who appointed this untrustworthy Board of Trustees of Florida International University must be held politically accountable for their very poor appointments.

We, the people, can do great things again but first we need to appoint great academic leaders for our universities.

 

This FIU news web-page identifies the main culprits and it is worth quoting in full in case the page is deleted by the university authorities at a later date to destroy evidence so as to pervert the course of justice. Every person named in bold here (apart from the reporter) I suspect and accuse of the charge of "involuntary manslaughter".

FIU NEWS - First-of-its-kind pedestrian bridge “swings” into place
Posted by Jennifer Lacayo × 03/10/2018 at 11:38 am



Construction marvel to connect FIU to Sweetwater

On March 10, the main span of the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge was lifted from its temporary supports, rotated 90 degrees across an eight-lane thoroughfare, and lowered into its permanent position.

“FIU is about building bridges and student safety. This project accomplishes our mission beautifully,” said FIU President Mark B. Rosenberg. “We are filled with pride and satisfaction at seeing this engineering feat come to life and connect our campus to the surrounding community where thousands of our students live.”

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. The main span of the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge was installed in a few hours with limited disruption to traffic over this weekend.

“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.”

The FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge is the largest pedestrian bridge moved via Self-Propelled Modular Transportation in U.S. history. It is also the first in the world to be constructed entirely of self-cleaning concrete. When exposed to sunlight, the titanium dioxide in the concrete captures pollutants and turns it bright white, reducing maintenance costs.

“FIU has come a long way since the TIGER grant that funded this pedestrian bridge was awarded in 2013. This project represents a true collaboration among so many different partners at local, state, and federal levels, and in both the public and private sectors,” said Mario Diaz-Balart, U.S. Representative and Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. “The university’s growth and acceleration is no longer just about the campus and its student body; it’s about the future of Sweetwater, Miami-Dade County and the entire South Florida region. I believe this is what creative solutions to transportation challenges look like, and I will continue to support and incentivize these new ideas.”



Funding for the $14.2 million bridge, connecting plazas and walkways is part of a $19.4 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Other funding agencies include the Federal Highway Administration, Florida Department of Transportation Local Agency Program, FIU and the City of Sweetwater.

“The FIU-Sweetwater bridge will serve many purposes including being a visually distinctive gateway to our city,” said City of Sweetwater Mayor Orlando Lopez. “This bridge is symbolic of the growth our city is experiencing and our partnership with FIU.”

Construction of the bridge began in the spring of 2017 and is expected to be completed in early 2019. When it is finished, the bridge will be 289 feet long and 109 feet tall. The 32-foot-wide bridge will also serve as study and gathering space.

“This bridge is the result of great support from our congressional delegation and the U.S. Department of Transportation,” said FIU Senior Vice President and CFO Kenneth Jessell. “This bridge has already been the catalyst for significant economic development in the City of Sweetwater. FIU and our surrounding community will benefit from this project for generations to come.”

The bridge was designed by FIGG Bridge Engineers and built by MCM. Barnhart Crane and Rigging operated the Self-Propelled Modular Transporters that placed the bridge on its permanent supports.
​

 

This bridge was built to last 100 years !!

Ha !!

 

it was a bridge to farminded start video time 1:00

 

How long before the Right blames Obama for this?

 

FIU didn't design nor build the bridge. I hope we find the culprit soon.

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florid...pse-sweetwater-construction-today-2018-03-15/
see it was pc made to be pretty concrete

then logical not to hurt others feeling if it got dirty obamas mindset

 

They don't make bridges like they used to.

 

reference
https://theconstructor.org/concrete/photocatalytic-concrete-properties-applications/21116/

 

they dont make those students in that school either, like us like they use too

 

They don't even know what happened yet.

What the hell is wrong with you people? Has the internet and Alex Jones completely destroyed your ability to think rationally?

 

How long before the left cries that banning bridges will save lives?

 

why at least the center pillar was in place before that allowed traffic threw that blivd

http://news.fiu.edu/wp-content/uploads/Pedestrian-bridge-rendering-2.5.16-1.jpg

 

oh golly gee it will stay up with out the center pillar, its not needed yet

 

I don't see the connection with the moon landing.

I can guarantee you that the Florida Board of Trustees had absolutely nothing to do with the engineering of this bridge. They likely couldn't tell you the first thing about engineering. Seems petty to fire people who aren't responsible.

Depending on what caused the collapse, the engineers should be sued.

 

Private companies build bridges not the university. If there is fault here, it is almost certainly their's.

 

Blaming Obama coming right up, but I am not the "right" blaming "left" but a competent scientist blaming incompetence.


2015 - Atorod Azizinamini, director of the Florida International University bridge collapse, is congratulated by Obama's Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, as the Obama Administration names Azizinamini a "Champion of Change in Transportation".


The White House Champions of Change event on October 13, 2015, honored 11 men and women who are innovating in transportation and growing the American economy. To learn more about the 2015 Champions of Change in Transportation in their own words, please click on their names below.

• Atorod Azizinamini, Chair, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Florida International University – Miramar, Florida
  Dr. Atorod Azizimamini invented the Folder Steel Plate Girder bridge system, which provides a cost-effective alternative for rapidly replacing or retrofitting short span bridges without impacting traffic or mobility. His rapid bridge replacement technology gives states a cost-effective solution to bridge upgrades that is faster to complete.

​

Maybe Obama's Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx accepted the not-great but rotten-to-the-core Florida International University's accreditation of Azizinamini as the basis of why Obama made him a "transportation champion of change".

FIU trusted Azizinamini and that's why Obama / Foxx trusted him. Obama's mistake was trusting FIU but as we can now see that institution is rotten to the core - the core being an incompetent President, Mark B. Rosenberg, supported by an untrustworthy board of trustees.

However Obama and Foxx are gone now so the present Florida governor and the state police and President Trump and the FBI need to decide if they still trust Azizimamini enough not to arrest him right away on a charge of involuntary manslaughter, as I would recommend.

Executive Recommendation

Atorod Azizinamini should be arrested immediately and if he is to be released on bail by a court it should be with the bail condition that he is forbidden from acting as Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering or Director of FIU’s Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC) pending his trial on a charge of involuntary manslaughter.

References -

Canada Free Press - Father of Collapsed Florida Bridge was Obama ‘Champion of Change’ in 2015
Celebrated leading visionary bridge engineer Atorod Azizinamini, whose ABC (Accelerated Bridge Construction) technology was used to build the bridge that collapsed yesterday on Florida International University’s campus, was named an Obama era Department of Transportation ‘Champion of Change’ in 2015.

The event in which Azizinamini was awarded ‘Champion of Change’ status was webcast live at whitehouse.gov/live, no longer online.​

Actually, the University of Maine has uploaded an edited video of that Obama administration webcast, here



You can see Azizinamini sitting on the panel at the end of the video, second from the left and here are a couple of photographs of him from the White House event.

 

This is too easy.
Dieversity kills.

 

Of course you are, complete with citing a Right-wing whack-job Flake News site, the Canada Free Press.
It appears the "private sector" construction company did not follow Azizinamini's technology and left out the center support. I know, Obama made then do it.

 

Yet when in this following quote from the FIU NEWS story, the FIU's chair of Civil Engineering and Director of Accelerated Bridge Construction, Atorod Azizinamini - that's him here with Obama's Secretary of Transportation

reads like he and the FIU are very happy with the design.

The culprits were named in the FIU NEWS story - those who ordered, specified, funded, designed and authorised the bridge design and construction method - which I quoted from and linked to in my post above.

That FIU news story professionally identifies those responsible for the bridge - and responsible for the bridge collapse too.

 

What happened is incompetent university administrators incorrectly validated incompetent academics who incorrectly validated incompetent professionals and dodgy methods to botch a construction job which killed innocent people.

What happened was that reckless people committed a crime of involuntary manslaughter.

It's more a question of what experience do I have which helps me easily to identify the issue of systemic institutional university incompetence?

No. I crossed swords with institutionally incompetent universities - in Aberdeen, Scotland - who had and still have the courts and the police at their beck and call via university lawyers to impose their will to exclude and silence me in the early 1990s - before I had access to the internet.
So I had to do a google search to find out who "Alex Jones" is. I've never listened to his radio shows. Why would I?

If you want to listen to me talk about this kind of thing, I can post a video I produced talking about the murder of 2 French students who were studying in London.

Admittedly, this video from 2009 will not be as topical or relevant for Americans as Alex Jones but you can have a listen, at least to satisfy your curiosity as to "what the hell is wrong with you people".

 

IS this the new Republican infrastructure renewal plan?

 

Since when are university administrators capable of assessing if something was safe? They funded it, only. A private company built and was responsible for its safety I suspect.

 

My reference was to the Apollo 11 blast off which happened in Florida.

My point is that Florida can do great things or it can screw things up.

What Florida does - great things or screw-ups - is up to the choices the people of Florida make and which politicians they choose to vote for and which academics they choose to learn from. Bad politicians and bad academics, or good politicians and good academics?

I wanted to point to the manned mission to the moon because achieving this successfully was many times more difficult an organisational and engineering challenge than building a pedestrian bridge.

Therefore comparing and contrasting the great leaders who took men to the moon with the criminals who are killing people trying to put up a pedestrian bridge is a sharp contrast. The best of us and the worst of us somehow managing to pass themselves off as the "pillars of the community - champions of transport etc.". Somehow managing to fool the people, somehow not finding themselves in the political firing line for their lethal incompetence.

Oh but they had a lot to do with the bridge collapse and they had a lot of responsibility for what the university did.

The board of trustees were trusted to appoint or to sack if needs be the President of the University and they decided not to sack Mark B. Rosenberg, which was a not a great decision but a rotten betrayal of trust. The people trusted these trustees to sack a rotten president but they didn't sack the rotten president Rosenberg.

The rotten president appointed rotten officers of the university who appointed the rotten engineer Atorod Azizinamini as a Chair of Engineering and a director of accelerated bridge construction who approved of the rotten design and construction method for the bridge, which collapsed.

The rotten president made the whole university rotten to the core but it is only sometimes that we see how rotten a university is, when something they are responsible fails so obviously that the people can notice that something had gone wrong.

The rotten president still needs sacking (and arresting for involuntary manslaughter) so the people need a new board of trustees whom they can trust to sack Rosenberg and appoint someone who can be a good president for the university.

Of course there are civil liabilities and there should be civil actions.

However, there are also criminal liabilities, a crime of involuntary manslaughter has been committed - and the criminals concerned must be held accountable otherwise they will kill again.

 

NASA was not Florida. It was a national not state agency (well it still is).