I-35 Bridge Failures

Words: 483
Pages: 2

On August 1, 2007, a major bridge carrying I-35W over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed. The collapse killed 13 people and drawing attention to poor infrastructure of the bridges throughout the country. At the time, there were assumptions that poor maintenance might have played a major factor in the collapse but a year later, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a fifth update of the investigation into the Collapse of the I-35 Bridge which pointed to a design flaw as the major perpetrator. Another stunning issue is that Minnesota Officials were notified about the integrity of the bridge’s structures but due to the limited budget, they decided to take the rink and repair small patchwork instead of the massive repair that was needed. …show more content…
The firm designed the bridge and obviously did not test their design effectively enough. Clearly, there are ethical and moral issues here. It seems like as if the inspection of the bridge wasn’t done properly and if it was not all the factors were included. Shortcuts in engineering design can lead to engineering disasters. This collapse wouldn’t have occurred if the firm had adequately tested their design. The huge ethical issue here is that other bridges like this one could collapse due to design flaws of similar kind. This could’ve possibly been avoided if the officials inspecting the bridge had tested the bridge integrity because it looks like as they did not catch the design flaw either. Officials simply accepted the design that was presented to them by the Sverdrup & Parcel. Another issue here was that the gusset plates were not strong enough to hold the traffic the bridge was designed for by the firm. The designing firm is ultimately responsible and should be blamed for in this situation. If Sverdrup & Parcel had recalculated their results and double checked their design the tragedy might not have