Pittsburgh bridge collapses hours before Biden’s
infrastructure speech in city
At least 10 injured and a bus and several cars left
stranded in wreckage after 477ft-long bridge on Forbes Avenue caved in
Ed
Pilkington in New York
@edpilkington
Fri 28 Jan
2022 15.52 EST
It would be
hard to imagine a more dramatic way to illustrate the need for investment in US
infrastructure that Joe Biden spoke about in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on
Friday.
Hours
before his visit and just four miles from where the president was scheduled to
speak, one of Pittsburgh’s major car bridges collapsed.
At about
7am, the 477ft-long bridge on Forbes Avenue caved in, leaving a mass of
concrete rubble and twisted metal as a visual metaphor for America’s crumbling
infrastructure.
At least 10
people were injured, three taken to hospital, and a bus and several cars were
left stranded in the wreckage. Rescue crews had to rappel 150ft down the
hillside to reach injured people, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Biden
kicked off his Pittsburgh tour with a visit to the stricken bridge. Praising
first responders at the scene, he noted that the city has more bridges than any
other in the world and promised: “We’re going to fix them all.”
In his
formal remarks, he said: “Across the country there are 45,000 bridges in poor
condition. That is simply just unacceptable. That is why your governor, your
members of Congress and your mayor has been saying for years.”
He
continued: “I’ve talked about it every time I’ve come to Pittsburgh, and we
finally got it done: a bipartisan infrastructure law, including the largest
investment in our nation’s bridges since Eisenhower put together the interstate
highway system.”
“If this
would have occurred an hour later, this is a road that gets probably about
15,000 cars on it a day, and if it was rush hour, we would be looking at a
couple hundred cars down in that valley,” said Corey O’Connor, a Pittsburgh
city council member.
He added:
“We got very, very lucky today, and hopefully those individuals at the hospital
recover quickly and they’re home safe in the next couple days.”
Mike Doyle,
the Democratic Congress member for the Pittsburgh area, said the bridge
collapse was a “tragic example of why the infrastructure bill Congress just
enacted is needed. We should be constantly investing more in our infrastructure
so our bridges and other public works don’t reach this point of disrepair.”
The timing
of the disaster was uncanny. Biden was visiting Pittsburgh to promote his
$1.2tn infrastructure package, which he signed into law in November after it
passed through Congress with exceptionally rare bipartisan support.
The bill is
designed to inject vastly needed resources into the repair of the country’s
infrastructure, including roads, railways, drinking water and bridges. Under
the scheme, Pennsylvania is earmarked for $1.63bn of federal funds specifically
for bridge improvements.
The Forbes
Avenue Bridge itself told a story. The structure was built in 1972, putting its
age – 52 – years above the national average of 44 years for US bridges. A
recent report from city inspectors found that both its deck and superstructure
underneath the road were in poor condition.
That story
is one that is repeated across the country. Years of inadequate public
investment have allowed critical constructions and networks to age and
deteriorate. Six people were killed in a catastrophic bridge collapse in Miami,
Florida, in 2018.
Last year
the American Society of Civil Engineers surveyed the landscape of US
infrastructure and gave it a C-minus. The report noted that of the country’s
617,000 bridges, 42% were at least 50 years old and more than 46,000, or 7.5%,
structurally deficient and in a poor state.
By the
society’s reckoning, the US needs not only an emergency injection of funds to
rehabilitate its bridges, but a regular increase of investment from the current
$14bn to $23bn annually.
Again,
Pennsylvania tells the tale. The state is fourth in the national table for the
proportion of its structurally deficient bridges and 15% of its bridges are in
poor condition, after Rhode Island (22%), Iowa (19%) and South Dakota (17%).
Pittsburgh
politicians made the connection between the Forbes Avenue Bridge collapse and
Biden’s visit. The city’s mayor, Ed Gainey, said they were fortunate to have
had no deaths and added: “We know we have bridges we need to take care of.”
With Biden
visiting on the same day as the disaster “to talk about this infrastructure
bill and why this funding is so important, today is significant”, Gainey said.
In his
remarks, Biden, who was born in Pennsylvania but represented Delaware as a
senator, told his audience he had “come home”.
He also
said: “Right here in Pittsburgh, the future is being built on this city’s
storied past. We know what happens when we stop investing in places like
Pittsburgh.”
The
infrastructure bill was one of the rare instances in recent times, and during
Biden’s presidency, when a modicum of accord has been reached between the two
main parties. The package passed the House of Representatives in November by
228 to 206 votes, with 13 Republicans backing it.
Soon after
the Senate gave its blessing, with 69 votes to 30, clearing the 60-vote
filibuster that has so often strangled Biden’s initiatives.
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