Diversity Bridge Is Falling Down, My Fair Lady

[Fishrrman]

http://takimag.com/article/diversity_bridge_is_falling_down_my_fair_lady_david_cole#axzz5AIawsc38

Diversity Bridge Is Falling Down, My Fair Lady
by David Cole
March 20, 2018

Well, that is damned inconvenient. A state-of-the-art pedestrian bridge hailed as the inevitably wondrous result of diversity in engineering has collapsed within days of being paraded before the media. Did I say inconvenient? I should have said symbolic.

“Diversity Bridge” (that’s not the structure’s official name, but I think it fits) was designed to connect Florida International University to the city of Sweetwater, where many FIU students and staff reside. The bridge, installed (though not yet opened to the public) a mere four days before its failure, spanned a busy Miami highway, and the collapse crushed cars and people underneath. Authorities report at least six deaths.

Prior to pancaking, Diversity Bridge had been championed as “an engineering feat come to life.” One of the geniuses who accomplished this “feat” is an engineer who was hailed by President Obama in 2015 as a “champion of change”: Atorod Azizinamini, director of FIU’s Accelerated Bridge Construction Center (now renamed the Accelerated Bridge Destruction Center). The firm that built the bridge, Munilla Construction Management (MCM), is run by the Munilla brothers—Raul, Juan, Jorge, Lou, Fernando, and Pedro (is that a construction firm or the latest incarnation of Menudo?). And then we have Leonor Flores, MCM’s senior manager. On March 14, as Diversity Bridge was being installed, Flores was quoted in this breathless puff piece on the FIU website:

Twelve-year-old Michelle Flores shared a special moment with her family at FIU this past Saturday: She and her sister Gabriela joined their parents, FIU alumni Leonor and Henry Flores MIS ’01, to watch a 950-ton section of a pedestrian bridge swing into its permanent position across Southwest 8th Street. Leonor Flores ’98 is a project executive and one of 63 FIU alumni who work for MCM, the construction firm building the FIU-Sweetwater University City Bridge. She was excited to share her work with her family, especially Michelle, who is interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) in school. Said Leonor: “It’s very important for me as a woman and an engineer to be able to promote that to my daughter, because I think women have a different perspective. We’re able to put in an artistic touch and we’re able to build, too.”

More at the URL above...

Some very interesting facts about the 1993 Amtrak wreck at Bayou Canot (if you scroll down)