Lead engineer alerted officials of cracking 2 days before Miami bridge collapse

The Florida Department of Transportation released a voicemail Friday night left by W. Denney Pate, the lead engineer for the FIU pedestrian bridge that collapsed earlier this week, killing six.

The message was left for an FDOT employee and was not heard until March 16.

The transcription of the voicemail is below and audio is available HERE:

“Hey Tom, this is Denney Pate with FIGG bridge engineers. Calling to, uh, share with you some information about the FIU pedestrian bridge and some cracking that’s been observed on the north end of the span, the pylon end of that span we moved this weekend. Um, so, uh, we’ve taken a look at it and, uh, obviously some repairs or whatever will have to be done but from a safety perspective we don’t see that there’s any issue there so we’re not concerned about it from that perspective although obviously the cracking is not good and something’s going to have to be, ya know, done to repair that. At any rate, I wanted to chat with you about that because I suspect at some point that’s gonna get to your desk. So, uh, at any rate, call me back when you can. Thank you. Bye.”