The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a scathing review of blunders that caused a 40-ton girder to collapse onto I-70 two years ago, killing a family of three. The catalog of errors is stunning, and we find it hard to understand why no one is being held accountable.
U.S. officials had harsh words for two contractors, Asphalt Specialties Co. and Ridge Erection Co., and the supervising agency, the Colorado Department of Transportation, for the construction blunder that led to the deaths of William and Anita Post and their daughter, Koby, 2, on May 15, 2004.
NTSB acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker said Wednesday in Washington, D.C., that, “It disgusts me that a family was wiped out because of the sloppiness of this project.”
Installation of the girder had begun three days before the collapse but because of mistakes in assembling the beam, a second girder wasn’t yet in place when the weather halted its installation. The original girder was temporarily braced to the bridge over I-70, but, according to the NTSB, investigators found severe errors with the project, including that the girder was out of plumb; the braces weren’t flush with the bridge deck; bolts used to secure the girder were set too shallow into the concrete and the bolt drill holes were larger than the bolts themselves.
The collapse occurred three days later when the girder twisted loose.
Incredibly, no charges were ever filed or penalties applied in the incident, though the NTSB report seems to suggest criminal negligence. Colorado Revised Statutes say that “(a) person acts with criminal negligence when, through a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise, he fails to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a result will occur or that a circumstance exists.”)
“All I can tell you is that we presented a case to the district attorney’s office,” Jeffco sheriff’s spokeswoman Jacki Kelley told us.
“The sheriff’s department did investigate, but I don’t believe they ever found probable cause that a crime was committed,” said Pam Russell, spokeswoman for District Attorney Scott Storey, who wasn’t in office when the tragedy occurred. However, she said, if there were “new evidence uncovered or discovered in the NTSB investigation, then we would reconsider it.”
CDOT and the two companies paid out $1.5 million to the Posts’ families and agreed to contribute another $200,000 to charity. But it’s hard to believe there have been no dismissals, no penalties, no fines. According to CDOT’s Stacey Stegman, nobody at CDOT has been fired and nobody’s engineering license has been revoked or even suspended.
The NTSB says the accident could have been avoided. With three people dead, Jefferson County should take another look at fixing responsibility for the Post tragedy.
