I was just reading an article in the NY Times Fenders Might Have Helped, and it illuminated a few problems with the bridge.
When I saw the video of the collapse I couldn’t help but notice not only how unprotected the bridge was from any mishap, but how dependent the structure of the bridge was on the rest of the bridge for support.
In most cases when a bridge is struck by a passing freighter or a barge, only the part that was struck receives damage. In this case basically the whole bridge collapsed when the ship struck the one support pillar.
It seems like the engineers left this bridge incredibly vulnerable to just this event. I don’t know the history of the bridge, maybe people warned about this vulnerability and tried to protect the bridge. At any rate, it sure seemed preventable if only a few measures had been put into place to protect it.
Also, I sure wouldn’t recommend the same design be used when they rebuild, not that my opinion matters much. Secondly, I would make sure they also build protection from ships on all support pillars that are in danger of a ship collision.
You would have thought they would have done the pillar protection the first time but it wasn’t there so it allowed this accident to be catastrophic.
Hopefully the bridge collapse won’t disrupt things too much, but its tragic that workers lost their lives in the collapse.
I am surprised though that there hasn’t been much mention of why the bridge was so easily tanked.
It will probably be coming though once the shock wears off.