More than two years after the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge sent six vehicles tumbling into a Frick Park ravine in a disaster that raised dire concerns statewide about bridge safety, federal officials are set to reveal the findings of a painstaking investigation into the cause.

A virtual hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board on the Jan. 28, 2022 collapse is scheduled to begin Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. It is expected to include a presentation by investigators, feature an animation of the bridge failure and provide better understanding of what went wrong over the years for the long-troubled span.

The board’s three members — there are currently two vacancies — will ask questions and then vote on adopting investigators’ findings on the probable cause of the collapse and any recommendations to improve bridge safety.

The 447-foot-long span that joined Regent Square and Squirrel Hill, fell around 6:40 a.m. on Jan. 28, 2022. Five vehicles, including a Pittsburgh Regional Transit articulated bus, were on the bridge at the time and fell roughly 100 feet into the gorge. A sixth vehicle drove off the embankment either during or just after the collapse.

Nine people were inside those vehicles. No one died, but there were numerous injuries, some severe.

That day, President Joe Biden, already scheduled to come to Pittsburgh to tout his signature trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, visited the site. He returned nearly nine months later during construction of a replacement bridge.

“It never should’ve come to this,” Biden said.

History of problems

The safety board is the federal entity tasked with investigating accidents involving transportation and infrastructure such as bridges, highways and pipelines. Over the last two years, as part of its work, the agency has released thousands of pages of records on the Fern Hollow Bridge.

The board has previously identified the bridge’s corroded legs, clogged drains and uncoated weathering steel as focal points of its investigation.

“Investigators found corrosion, deterioration, and section loss on all four of the bridge’s legs due to the continual accumulation of water and debris,” according to the board.

Those findings prompted the board in May to urge the Federal Highway Administration to develop a plan for transportation officials throughout the country to scrutinize other bridges made from uncoated weathering steel. The alloy is used in more than 10,000 bridges in the U.S.

Since the collapse, a variety of records, photographs and inspection reports have been released, including communications among the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, city officials and the safety board, as well as contracts for work to be completed on the bridge.

Built in 1970, the bridge was used by about 14,000 cars daily and had long been flagged by inspectors for its poor condition. According to an inspection report just four months prior to the collapse, the bridge had an overall rating of 4 on a 9-point scale and was considered to be “structurally deficient.”

Among areas of concern were the bridge superstructure and areas beneath the bridge’s deck.

In photos captured by cameras on the bus, the bridge deck can be seen beginning to separate at the east expansion joint on the Point Breeze side of the bridge.

A second photo from the bus shows the west end of the bridge on the Squirrel Hill side falling off the abutment at about the same time.

According to records, the bridge’s weight limit was reduced in 2014 to 26 tons.

Among the records released by the safety board was an interview with a PennDOT assistant chief bridge engineer from August 2022 who said “To go several inspections and note the increased loss and that not result in a new load rating is one of the head scratchers, in my opinion, of this whole thing.”

Pittsburgh’s response

City officials responded to the disaster with a new focus on maintaining and repairing the rest of the 147 bridges maintained by the city.

“We’re known as the city of bridges, and for far too long, we’ve let our bridges be underfunded,” Mayor Ed Gainey said when he announced new efforts to maintain the city’s spans in the wake of the bridge collapse.

Gainey — who had taken office weeks before the bridge fell — launched an in-house bridge maintenance team and increased funding for bridge repairs and maintenance. The city formed a commission dedicated to managing the city’s infrastructure, though it was more than a year later before the mayor filled the commission’s positions and the group held its first meeting.

The city also commissioned independent experts to prepare a report outlining the status of all city-maintained bridges. The report showed dozens of bridges in need of maintenance. The bridges that were identified as needing immediate repairs saw no fixes for several months after the report was completed.

Lawsuits filed

Nearly all the people caught in the bridge collapse, along with some of their spouses, have filed suit in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

They include the bus driver, Daryl Luciani, and his wife, Karen; his two passengers, Anna Nichols and Matthew Evans; dentist Clinton Runco, who drove off the embankment, and his wife, Irene; Velva and Tyrone Perry, who were together in a pickup; Joseph Engelmeier, who was on his way to work; and motorist Thomas Bench and his wife, Sara, who was not in the vehicle.

According to the safety board’s preliminary findings, two of the people on the bridge sustained serious injuries, two sustained minor injuries, four were not physically harmed and the status of one was unknown.

The lawsuits name as defendants the City of Pittsburgh, as well as engineering firms Larson Design Group Inc., Gannett Fleming Inc. and CDM Smith Inc.

But the legal fight began even before any lawsuits were filed.

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs spent months attempting to identify the civil engineering firms involved in inspecting and maintaining the bridge in an attempt to learn who else might be responsible for its collapse.

But the city’s attorneys refused to provide the information the plaintiffs were seeking, arguing that they were prohibited from releasing relevant documents because of the ongoing safety board investigation.

Finally, in January — after a hearing on the issue and after the safety board released a batch of records — the plaintiffs withdrew their request for documents from the city and engineering firms, saying they obtained them from other sources.

Under Pennsylvania law, damages against the city for an incident like the bridge collapse are capped at $500,000 total no matter how many people were affected.

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