Pittsburgh commuters rescued from collapsed bridge | WORLD
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Pittsburgh commuters rescued from collapsed bridge


Rescuers rappelled nearly 150 feet down a snowy ravine to recover people when a 52-year-old bridge collapsed early Friday morning. Four vehicles were on the bridge at the time. Some teams formed human chains to pull passengers out of a dangling Port Authority bus caught on a ledge. At least 10 people suffered minor injuries, and three people were taken to the hospital. The collapse happened just hours before President Joe Biden visited the city to promote his infrastructure bill, which earmarks $1.6 billion for Pennsylvania bridge maintenance.

Was the bridge in bad shape before it collapsed? A gas distribution line that ran under the bridge broke and caused a natural gas leak when the bridge fell, but the company confirmed there was no evidence a gas explosion caused the disaster. The 447-foot steel span was built in 1970 and carries roughly 14,500 vehicles per day along the popular route into downtown Pittsburgh. City officials said the latest September inspection gave them no cause for concern. But a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spreadsheet lists the bridge’s road surface and superstructure condition as “poor.”

Dig deeper: Read Esther Eaton’s report in The Stew on the details of Biden’s infrastructure agenda.


Carolina Lumetta

Carolina is a WORLD reporter and a graduate of the World Journalism Institute and Wheaton College. She resides in Washington, D.C.

@CarolinaLumetta


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news2me

It's a shame what happened to those people. It should not have happened.
I wish there was someone who went around and looked at the illegal spending that goes on in cities.
But now there are too many gov't people who will look the other way when money is misappropriated.
Speaking of gov't: I am SO TIRED of seeing NATURAL FLAVORING in almost everything. It's not natural. (Just had to throw that in.)

KDON9307

Interesting it "accidentally" happened just before Biden arrived to give his speech. ;-)

Salty1KDON9307

I know! You couldn’t have it at a worst time where even this bridge was not on the list to be repaired. Everything Biden does seems to mess up. Obama said some unflattering things about Biden, in regards to him screwing things up. One thing I could agree on.

SAWGUNNER

Most states have their own DoT for road and bridge MAINTENANCE, but the actual construction is done by contractors who submit the (presumably lowest) bid for the project. I'd want to see the civil engineer's specs and how well the contractors met them. Once built the state engineers from the PADoT would presumably inspect it regularly. Let's see those inspection records hauled to a committee in Harrisburg

news2meSAWGUNNER

There won't be any hauling if they are Dems.

news2meSAWGUNNER

You would think cities would use the funds they have rec'd for many years for road/bridge maintenance, but not if they use the money for other things. Our city used our money for a whole list of other stuff. Some of our streets have not been paved for over 10 years. But they built a trolley in downtown, and invited a city full of vagrants. We are beginning to look a lot like Cal., panhandlers and trash everywhere. People are beginning to complain about human excrement and syringes in alleys. There is a long list of all the stuff our council has spent our taxes on. Meanwhile they said we don't need so many services. Now I understand they are going to buy a worthless hockey team that someone else got rid of, and build them a stadium. If we could afford to move, we would.