1967 — Dec 15, Silver Bridge Collapse, vehicles fall, Point Pleasant WV/Gallipolis OH–   46

–46  Delatte. Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers. 2009, p. 71.

–46  Krajewski. Bridge Inspection and Interferometry.  2006, p. 13.

–46  Levy and Salvadori. Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail. 1987, p. 127.

–46  National Safety Council. Accident Facts 1970 Edition. Chicago, IL: NSC, 1970. p. 63.

–46  NTSB. HAR. Collapse of U.S. 35 Highway Bridge, Point Pleasant, WV, Dec 15, 1967.

–46  NTSB. Select NTSB Investigations into Bridge Collapses/ Collisions.

–46  Ohio Historical Society, The Silver Bridge Disaster.

–46  Petroski. To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design. 1992, p. 94.

–46  WV Div. of Culture and History. Time Trail, WV. “Dec 15, 1967: Silver Bridge Disaster.”

 

Narrative Information

 

Levy and Salvadori: “For forty years cars and trucks rolling westward on U.S. 35 from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, crossed the Ohio River over the Silver Bridge, so called because of the shiny aluminum paint used to prevent its steel members from rusting.  At 5:00 p.m. on December 15, 1967, a cold day when the temperature dropped to 30 [degrees] F (-1C), several loud cracking sounds were heard by a witness on the western Ohio shore.  The bridge was crowded with rush-hour traffic, normal for that time of day but swelled by Christmas shoppers returning home.  Within a minute the three spans of the bridge totaling 1,460 ft (445 m) in length, began to fall, hesitating for a breathless moment before collapsing with a roar into the icy river and carrying with it thirty-seven vehicles of all types.  The collapse started at the western span…twisting it in the northerly direction (an indication that a member of the north-side trussed structure may have failed); the span crashed folding over on top of the fallen cars and trucks.  Loaded by the whole weight of the center span, which had become unsupported at its west end, the east tower fell westward into the center of the river, carrying with it the center span.  The west tower then collapsed backward toward Point Pleasant, ending the destruction of the bridge.  Forty-six lives were lost, the suddenness of the accident evidenced by the body of one victim, a taxicab passenger, who was found the next day clutching a dollar bill in his hand. While the replacement of the Silver Bridge was under construction half a mile from the site of the disaster, the bodies of an eight-year-old girl and of a forty-year-old man were still missing, apparently carried downriver by the swift current of the Ohio….

 

“As originally built in 1928, the two-lane bridge had a timber deck and two sidewalks. For added durability, the roadway was replaced in 1941 with a concrete-filled steel grid. The bridge was also unique in that the chains served both as suspension elements and as a portion of the top chord of the stiffening trusses….

 

“The Silver Bridge at Point Pleasant was one of two identical bridges. Its twin at St. Marys, also on the Ohio River, was dismantled in 1969 to preclude a future disaster. But costly blunders serve as useful learning experiences. President Lyndon Johnson, partly to counterbalance the tragic blunders of Vietnam, took time out from world affairs to order an inquiry into bridge safety through-out the nation. It was the beginning of the realization that our aging infrastructure needed urgent attention. More than seven hundred thousand bridges were inspected and classified by a president’s panel on bridge safety.[1] The process of bridge repairs is still under way and has become a continuous effort to rehabilitate our infrastructure.”  (Levy and Salvadori.  Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail. 1987, Pp. 126-128, 133)

 

NTSB: “Synopsis   The U. S. 35 Highway Bridge connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with Kanauga, Ohio, collapsed at approximately 5 p.m. (EST) December 15, 1967. Forty-six persons died in the accident, nine were injured, and 31 of the 37 vehicles on the bridge fell with the bridge. Twenty-four vehicles fell into the Ohio River and seven fell on the Ohio shore. There were no pedestrians on the bridge at the time of collapse.

 

“The initial failure in the bridge structure was a cleavage fracture in the lower limb of the eye of eyebar 330 (north bar, north chain, Ohio side span) at joint C13N, the first eyebar chain joint west of the Ohio tower of the bridge. The cleavage fracture was followed by a ductile fracture in the upper limb of the eye of eyebar 330 at joint C13N, separating eyebar 330 from the chain. Immediately following the separation of eyebar 330 from joint C13N, the sister eyebar 33 slipped from the C13N joint pin, resulting in the separation of the north chain at that location. The collapse of the bridge began in the Ohio side span, moving eastward toward the West Virginia shore, with the result that within a period of about 1 minute, the 700-foot center span, the two 380-foot side spans, and the towers had collapsed.

 

“The Safety Board finds that the cause of the bridge collapse was the cleavage fracture in the lower limb of the eye of eyebar 330 at joint C13N of the north eyebar suspension chain in the Ohio side span. The fracture was caused by the development of a critical size flaw over the 40-year life of the structure as the result of the joint action of stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue.

Contributing causes are:

 

  • In 1927, when the bridge was designed, the phenomena of stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue were not known to occur in the classes of bridge material used under conditions of exposure normally encountered in rural areas.

 

  • The location of the flaw was inaccessible to visual inspection.

 

  • The flaw could not have been detected by any inspection method known in the state of the art today without disassembly of the eyebar joint.

 

Recommendations   The Safety Board recommends that:

 

  1. The Secretary of Transportation expand existing research programs or institute new research programs to:

 

  1. Identify bridge building materials susceptible to slow flaw growth by any of the suspected mechanisms;
  2. Determine critical flaw size under various stress levels in bridge building materials;
  3. Develop inspection equipment capable of detecting critical or near critical flaws in standing bridge structures;
  4. Devise analytical procedures to identify critical locations in bridge structures which require detailed inspection;
  5. Develop standards which incorporate appropriate safeguards in the design and fabrication of future bridges to ensure protection against failures of material such as occurred in the Point Pleasant Bridge;
  6. Develop standards for the qualification of materials for future bridge structures, using the information disclosed in this investigation;
  7. Devise techniques for repair, protection, or salvage of bridges damaged by internal flaws; and
  8. Expand the knowledge of loading history and life expectancy of bridges.

 

  1. The Secretary of Transportation explore the alternatives for action to assure mandatory application of the bridge safety requirements of the 1968 Federal-Aid-Highway Act to all highway bridges in the United States, since the majority of older bridges in the country are not in the Federal-Aid-Highway System and these bridges are most susceptible to extensive repair or replacement; including such alternative courses of action as urging the adoption by the States of mandatory standards, or the enactment of Federal legislation applicable to all highway bridges.

 

  1. The Secretary of Transportation consider the advisability of proposing a program of Federal aid to ensure the adequate repair of all bridges not in the Federal-Aid-System.” (NTSB. HAR. Collapse of U.S. 35 Highway Bridge, Point Pleasant, WV, Dec 15, 1967.)

 

OH Historical Society: “On December 15, 1967…a national tragedy occurred. Forty-six interstate travelers lost their lives when the Silver Bridge collapsed into the Ohio River during five o’clock rush hour traffic. The 2,235 foot two-way vehicular bridge connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Kanauga, Ohio via U.S. Route 35. The West Virginia Ohio River Company built the structure in 1928 for $1.2 million. The bridge, unique in its engineering conception, was the first of its design in America and the second in the world. Instead of woven-wire cable, the bridge was suspended on heat-treated eye-bar chains. It was named the “Silver Bridge” because it was the first in the world to be painted with aluminum paint….”  (OH Historical Society, “The Silver Bridge Disaster.”)

 

WV Gov.: “The Silver Bridge was built in 1928. It spanned the Ohio River between Pt. Pleasant and Kanauga, Ohio, for nearly 40 years. When it collapsed during rush hour, 46 people died.

 

“A bridge of identical design at St. Marys in Pleasants County was closed immediately out of concern for its safety. Authorities later replaced it.

 

“Following the collapse of the Silver Bridge, it’s pieces were recovered and taken to a field south of Pt. Pleasant. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation revealed that an eyebar pin had failed, causing the bridge’s tragic drop into the Ohio River. The Silver Bridge disaster resulted in more stringent regulations for bridge construction and inspection.

 

“A new bridge across the Ohio was dedicated at nearby Henderson, two years to the day after the Silver Bridge tragedy.” (WV Division of Culture and History. Time Trail, WV. “Dec 15, 1967: Silver Bridge Disaster.”)

 

Krajewski:  “The Silver Bridge collapse highlighted the dangers of not having a comprehensive and standardized bridge inspection system. In 1968, the United States Congress revised the “Federal Highway Act of 1968”. The Act required the Secretary of Transportation to establish a national bridge inspection standard and create a program to train bridge inspectors (USDOT 1995). The intent of the inspection standard and training program was to create a manual of bridge components to inspect, what conditions could be present, and requirements to be a bridge inspector.”  (Krajewski.  Bridge Inspection and Interferometry.  2006, p. 15.)

 

“In the early 1970’s the National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS) policy, the Bridge Inspector’s Training Manual (Manual 70), and the Recording and Coding Guide for the Structure Inventory and appraisal of the Nation’s Bridges (Coding Guide) were created by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to establish the procedures for biannual inspection of all bridge structures that are part of a Federal Aid highway system; bridges on local non-Federal Aid

roads were not included. In addition, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) published its Manual for Maintenance Inspection of Bridges (Maintenance Manual) as a companion book to Manual 70. The NBIS policy and the Coding Guide provided organizational structure for states to follow while Manual 70 provided the details on how to inspect.”  (Krajewski.  Bridge Inspection and Interferometry.  2006, p. 15.)

 

“Manual 70 describes the bridge inspection process from the qualifications to be inspector, identifications of bridge types and components, inspection techniques for various materials, and how to write a bridge inspection report. What is emphasized in the manual that the bridge inspector’s primary duty is to record the condition of the bridge as accurately possible but not necessarily assign a numerical condition rating. The main tool of inspection sight and the manual provides descriptions and photographs of the various deteriorated conditions to record.

 

“For superstructure inspection, guidelines were included for identifying various conditions such as corrosion, cracking, splitting, connection slippage, deformation due to overload, damaged caused by collisions.

 

“The Manual 70 says to measure the extent of the damage or deterioration. For members, the manual provides a simple way to classify rust (light, moderate, severe), says look for buckling and kinks in members, and a method for detecting stress concentrations observing the cracking of paint near connections. Section 13 of Chapter 5, describes types steel bridges and components, stating for each one where to look for deterioration.

 

“Throughout Section 13 the main inspection tool is visual recognition of problems. Sound mentioned as an inspection tool for banging of bridge components while vehicles travel across the bridge. Feel is mentioned to measure excessive vibrations.

 

“Overall, Manual 70 lacked sufficient information on how to measure deterioration deformation accurately and quickly….”   (Krajewski 2006, 16.)

 

“The manual’s emphasis on inspectors reporting information only and not assigning a condition rating left states with lots of information but no way to easily rank bridges from worst to best in order to budget their limited financial resources. Manual 70, however, was a start and over time, the manual would be supplemented and the bridge inspection process would evolve.”  (Krajewski 2006, 17)

Sources

 

Delatte, Norbert J. Jr.  Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers. Reston, VA:  American Society of Civil Engineers Press, 2009.

 

Krajewski, Joseph E. Bridge Inspection and Interferometry. Master of Science Thesis, Civil Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, May 2006, 120 pages.  Accessed at: http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-050406-092613/unrestricted/JKrajewski-Thesis.pdf

 

Levy, Matthys, and Mario Salvadori.  Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 1987.

 

National Safety Council. “Greatest Number of Deaths in a Single Motor-Vehicle Accident.” Accident Facts 1970 Edition. Chicago, IL: NSC, 1970. p. 63.

 

National Transportation Safety Board. Highway Accident Report. Collapse of U.S. 35 Highway Bridge, Point Pleasant, West Virginia, December 15, 1967 (NTSB HAR-71/01).  Washington, DC:  NTSB, adopted Dec 16, 1970. At:  http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/1971/HAR7101.htm

 

National Transportation Safety Board.  Select NTSB Investigations into Bridge Collapses/ Collisions.  4/25/2009 at:  http://www.ntsb.gov/Pressrel/2007/Investig_bridge-collapses_080307.pdf

 

Ohio Historical Society. “The Silver Bridge Disaster/Silver Bridge Memorial, Marker #8-27.  Remarkable Ohio:  Marking Ohio’s History.  Accessed 11/12/2008 at:  http://www.ohiochannel.org/your_state/remarkable_ohio/marker_details.cfm?marker_id=274

 

Petroski, Henry.  To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design.  NY: Random House, Inc., 1992, 251 pages.

 

West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Time Trail, West Virginia. “December 15, 1967: Silver Bridge Disaster.” Accessed at:  http://www.wvculture.org/history/timetrl/ttdec.html#1215

 

 

 

 

[1] Task Force on Bridge Safety.