iMURDAu wrote:And it was built with advanced construction methods in just a few hours too!
To be completely accurate, it was actually built over several months, but was constructed alongside the road and then swung into position, to avoid closing the road throughout the construction.
I've heard (from someone discussing this on my other forum) that some work was going on on the bridge at the time it collapsed, but they didn't provide a source and I haven't been able to find any reporting that says so.
They said they had heard that it was being stress-tested (by pulling upwards with a crane), but it does rather beggar belief that that would be done while traffic passed underneath - if it was a test, then there must have been some possibility of failure, so I am sceptical about that claim (even for Florida).
Another person then suggested that perhaps this was a misinterpretation of the bridge's being "post-tensioned" which I find slightly more believable. However, firstly it still seems quite negligent to allow traffic to pass under while construction work is actively ongoing and secondly, it was then commented that it was ridiculous to put the bridge in position and allow traffic to pass under it without this being done already, especially with the suspension not yet in place and given the design of the bridge. I am not qualified to have an opinion on that, nor on the suggestion that due to the design the bridge may have been too weak to support its own weight without that suspension and should never have been left in place or had traffic pass under it without being supported unsupported.
However as I've already mentioned, I haven't been able to find where anything was reported about work being carried out at the time of the disaster, so this is mere hearsay.