Because FIU and state transportation officials continue to withhold other critical records under instructions from the National Transportation Safety Board, it’s hard to say what the FIU team’s response to the cracks was.
In a Feb. 28 memo, Jose Morales, a consulting engineer for FIU, notes one crack in particular “merits special attention.” Morales urges that the bridge engineer of record be consulted “to provide a response.” That engineer of record is W. Denney Pate of FIGG Bridge Group, which designed the bridge. The memo was sent to a project manager at Munilla Construction Management, the bridge project’s builder, and copied to Alberto Delgado, a construction project manager at FIU, and other members of the project team.
NTSB, which is investigating the bridge collapse, has told FIU and the Florida Department of Transportation not to release records dated after Feb. 19, so there are no available public records to document any response from FIGG or other team members to Morales’ memo. The Herald has sued to obtain subsequent records related to the bridge collapse. The bridge collapse is also the subject of a Miami-Dade police homicide investigation and families of some of the victims have filed lawsuits.
The Feb. 28 memo and the attached photos of cracking were released in error, an FIU attorney, Eric Isicoff, said Monday. After the Herald contacted FIU for comment on the cracks, Isicoff demanded reporters delete any copies of the documents from their computers.
“Any hard copies that have been made also should be destroyed,” Isicoff wrote.

Mark Caramanica, an attorney at Thomas & LoCicero representing the Herald in its public records requests to FIU, said the Herald has no obligation to comply.
“The Herald has a First Amendment right to publish this information, and the public has a right to know what may have led to this terrible event,” he said.
The cracks documented in the Feb. 28 memo were discovered while the span was still resting on the ground, after the removal of temporary shoring that provided support while it was built by the side of the Trail.
Beck and Howell said that’s potentially telling because the span at that point was resting only on a support on either end, mimicking the way it would stand once installed over the roadway. The cracks thus could have been a sign of shearing pressure — a sideways stress — that the No. 11 truss could not handle once under the full load it was meant to carry.
Both Beck and Howell, echoing other outside engineers who have analyzed publicly available blueprints, records, photos and videos, believe the connection between the No. 11 truss and the bridge deck — the place where the cracking occurred — was poorly designed, lacking sufficient steel and concrete to bear the enormous load placed on it. All the engineers emphasize that a clear-cut cause for the collapse may not be established until the NTSB publishes its conclusions, and that their analysis could change based on new information.
Ten days after the Feb. 28 memo, the bridge’s main span, fabricated by the side of the road, was lifted into place by two special transporters. That means FIU’s engineers and contractors had either done something to address the cracks or concluded they were not an issue, the outside engineers said.

In fact, some minor cracking was discovered even earlier, other released records show, but dismissed as inconsequential — a conclusion the independent engineers agree with.
But three days after the bridge was lifted into place, Pate called an FDOT official to report that cracking had been found at the north end of the bridge, records released by the agency immediately after the collapse show. In a recorded phone message, Pate said the cracks did not represent a safety hazard but should be repaired. It’s quite possible that the cracks Pate reported were the same ones in the photos and memo from Feb. 28, Howell said.
The cracks might have become worse after the bridge was moved and set in place, resting atop a pylon at either end. That would especially be the case if the No. 11 truss, the last diagonal piece at the north end, was beginning to fail under the full load of the bridge, he said.

The cracks were discussed at a meeting of project team members the morning of the collapse, though no safety concerns were raised, FDOT said. The bridge collapsed while crews were atop the walkway’s canopy, adjusting the tension on steel support rods inside the No. 11 truss member as traffic continued to flow on the open road below.
Whether the crews were tightening or loosening the rods has not been disclosed, but could be critical in explaining the cause of the collapse. Because the truss-type design of the bridge means there is no redundant support, the failure of a single structural piece can bring the entire overpass down under its own weight, experts say.
One early report, by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, had the crews tightening the rods in an effort to close the cracks, leading to speculation that over-tightening could have caused the truss to shatter.
But other experts, citing released bridge plans, say they were more likely loosening the rods. The rods were apparently a modification to the plans, added to the bridge design after FDOT asked FIU to move the entire bridge 11 feet north to accommodate a future lane for transit.
The move forced a change in the carefully calibrated plan for moving the bridge into place. It put the north end of the main span well off the edge of the roadway on a canal bank. Because a transport machine could not traverse that roadway edge, the point where it would lift the structure was moved toward the center of the bridge. That means the end would sag when lifted. To prevent that, the rods were added to provide extra compressive support.
The rods were tightened before the bridge was lifted off the ground. The plans called for them to be loosened after the bridge was in place because that extra compression was no longer needed. That’s the operation some experts believe was underway when the bridge plummeted to the ground.

The cracks in the Feb. 28 document were discovered after the rods were tightened, or stressed, in preparation for the lift. In the accompanying memo, Morales, an engineer with FIU consultant Bolton Perez & Associates, asked MCM and Pate to “determine if these were expected during the bridge stressing,” and singled out one crack that “due to the size” needed “special attention.”
Citing the cracks and his own calculations showing that the No. 11 truss was crushingly overstressed, Howell speculated that either operation — tightening or loosening — could have been enough to shatter the connection.
“Since it was right on the brink of failure, anytime you disturb it — boom — it goes,” Howell said. “It just needed a little push to go over the edge.”
A sufficiently attentive engineer, knowing what kind of load the No. 11 member was supposed to carry, should have exercised great caution and ordered a thorough review, preferably by an independent engineer not involved in the project to ensure objectivity, Howell said.
Given the bridge was moved into place soon after and subsequently fell, he assumes that did not happen.
“The cracks are telling them that the connection is failing, but they’re not seeing it,” Howell said. “When it’s your design, you rationalize your way around it. ”