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Pittsburgh bridge collapses the morning of Biden’s visit

by mcardinal

Lauren Moye, FISM News

 

On Friday, the president had a visit scheduled to Pittsburgh to tout the bipartisan infrastructure deal. Just hours before this visit, one of the city’s bridges collapsed.

The four-lane bridge across Fern Hollow collapsed around 6 am yesterday. The bridge is part of Forbes Avenue, one of the city’s main transportation routes. Over 14,000 vehicles cross it daily. Fortunately, the bridge collapsed early in the day. There were 10 reported injuries but no fatalities.

Pittsburgh City Council member Corey O’Connor told CNN, “If it was rush hour, we would be looking at a couple hundred cars down in that valley,” he told CNN.

Emergency responders like city firefighters had to rappel down the ravine 100 to 150 feet to rescue victims, according to Pittsburgh Fire Chief Darryl Jones. He also described how EMS and other responders “did like a daisy chain with hands, just grabbing people and pulling them up.”

The bridge collapse also caused a natural gas leak that required the evacuation of nearby homes until first responders got it under control.

Just two weeks ago, the Keystone State received $327 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation specifically for bridge repair. This was part of the larger $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal passed back in November.

The high-profile collapse in the City of Bridges just hours before President Joe Biden’s planned visit prompted a schedule change. He visited the Fern Hollow bridge destruction. He said, “It had been rated in poor condition for the past 10 years. What you all know, if you don’t you should know, there are another 3,300 bridges here in Pennsylvania, some of which are just as old and just as decrepit.”

The number comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 2021 national inventory. There are a total of 44,000 bridges across the states rated as being in poor condition in their 2021 national inventory. This designation does not mean the bridges are dangerous but simply that they need to be inspected more frequently, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Biden added that the U.S. doesn’t need headlines about fatalities “when the next bridge collapses” and at one point said “they’re gonna fix them all” specifically about the city’s 31 bridges rated in poor condition.

In total, the infrastructure bill designated $5.3 billion for bridge repair. This amount was distributed throughout the states. Pennsylvania received the third-largest share of all states.

The high-profile collapse of a bridge has caused political chatter regarding who did or did not vote for the infrastructure bill.

However, some Twitter users are using the opportunity to draw attention to an underreported fact regarding bridge infrastructure within the state that shows that both parties have some fault in contributing factors that led to the bridge reaching this point. In recent years, the state reallocated funds from bridge repair to other areas, such as funding the State Police.

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale reported these findings in 2019, noting that $4.25 billion transferred beginning in the 2012-2013 fiscal year could have “cut that list in half” regarding Pennsylvania’s known bridges that needed repairs.

Pennsylvania has had both Democratic and Republican governors in that time period, with one $800 million fund reallocation occurring in 2018 under Governor Tom Wolf (D-Penn.). DePasquale said this transfer “could have helped PennDOT make a significant dent in the list of urgent needs across Pennsylvania.”

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