Jun 24, 2009 7:15 pm US/Eastern
Troubled I-395 Bridge Causes Highway Accident
Click Here To See Stephen Stock's I-Team: Help For Troubled Bridges
MIAMI (CBS4 I-TEAM) ―
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Florida Highway Patrol troopers investigate the dislodging of a metal expansion joint on I-395.
CBS4 News
A piece of metal popped out of the road, causing busy I-395 to be shutdown on Wednesday; this same bridge was part of a two year
CBS4 I-Team Investigation.
I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock brought you the story last year of troubled bridges across South Florida.
Wednesday, one of those troubled bridges caused an accident leaving some cars banged up and others sitting in traffic.
It happened at on Interstate 395 near Biscayne Boulevard and NE Second Avenue in Downtown Miami.
CBS4 I-Team investigator Stephen Stock was there as the story unfolded.
The accident slowed traffic to a crawl eastbound across I-395 through Downtown Miami towards Miami Beach.
"It was a tractor trailer coming east bound," Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Pat Santangelo said. "On the eastbound lanes and as that tractor trailer passed over this bridge somehow the metal joint that connects the bridge to the solid ground so to speak popped up."
The steel plate that actually popped out of the road is so heavy a human cannot pick it up. Imagine such a big piece of metal popping up and hitting you in the front of your car.
The I-Team spoke with the woman driving the car with the demolished front end. She did not want to go on camera but expressed relief that she was physically okay, but surprised that something so bizarre happened to her on an Interstate bridge.
The heavy steel expansion joint, estimated to weigh more than a ton, popped up and struck two cars plus the truck that made it pop out in the first place.
"Fortunately (there were) no serious injuries," FHP's Pat Santangelo said. "Although one lady had her car demolished."
This bridge has been rated by engineers as structural deficient. One of 50 bridges throughout South Florida identified earlier this year by the CBS4 I-Team as being in as poor condition as that bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed in 2007.
Stephen Stock showed television viewers how crumbled the expansion joint is.
Click Here to see his report: I-Team: Help For Troubled Bridges.
When you get a close up look at the bridge you see how problematic it is.
Look at the expansion joint closely and you can see it's very unsafe to travel across. You can also see the bridge is in poor repair. In fact, statistics show this bridge was built in 1970. Structural engineers rated it a 36.8. Anything 50 or below is considered structurally deficient meaning the bridge is supposed to be repaired right way.
As the
I-Team first reported, there are 50 bridges throughout South Florida like this rated 50 or below by structural engineers meaning they are in need of repair. In fact, workers had been working on this bridge for months.
So far, state DOT officials haven't said whether that work contributed to this accident.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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