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    The Silver Bridge Disaster of 1967
    The Silver Bridge Disaster of 1967
    The Silver Bridge Disaster of 1967
    Ebook168 pages1 hour

    The Silver Bridge Disaster of 1967

    By Stephan G. Bullard, Bridget J. Gromek, Martha Fout and Ruth Fout

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    Point Pleasant's Silver Bridge, the first eyebar suspension bridge in the United States, was an engineering marvel when it was constructed in 1927 and 1928. Located on US Highway 35, the bridge spanned the Ohio River and linked Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with the towns of Kanauga and Gallipolis, Ohio. For almost 40 years, the structure provided dependable service for travelers in the region. On December 15, 1967, this service came to a dramatic and disastrous end. At 4:58 p.m., during the height of rush hour, the bridge suddenly collapsed. Rescue and recovery operations started immediately but were hampered by poor weather conditions and freezing rain. The cause of the collapse was linked to the bridge's innovative design. Undetected corrosion stress cracks caused an eyebar on the Ohio side to fracture; because the eyebars were linked together in a chain, the failure of one led to the catastrophic collapse of the entire bridge. In total, 46 lives were lost in the disaster.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateOct 1, 2012
    ISBN9781439641965
    The Silver Bridge Disaster of 1967
    Author

    Stephan G. Bullard

    Using the archives of the Point Pleasant River Museum as a launching point, Stephan G. Bullard, Bridget J. Gromek, Martha Fout, and Ruth Fout weave together period photographs and firsthand eyewitness accounts to create a compelling narrative of this horrific tragedy.

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      The Silver Bridge Disaster of 1967 - Stephan G. Bullard

      (USACE).

      INTRODUCTION

      The people along the Ohio River near the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, had long wished for a bridge. The river was not overly wide, but reaching the opposite side was difficult and sometimes impossible. Getting across involved owning a boat, making arrangements to be ferried over, or traveling to one of the distant bridges north or south of the town.

      In 1927, the region’s prayers seemed to be answered when construction began on the Silver Bridge. The span was to be a modern roadway bridge connecting Point Pleasant with Kanauga, Ohio. It took two years to complete, but on May 30, 1928, the long-anticipated bridge finally opened. The joyous occasion was marked by festivities, speeches, and pageantry; everyone attended the ceremony. It was one of the most momentous events in the region’s long history. Sadly—though no one in the buoyant, opening day crowd realized it—the seeds of the bridge’s eventual collapse were already in place.

      The Silver Bridge was intended to be an engineering marvel. It would incorporate the newest technical innovations and be of the latest design. In an era of rapidly changing technology, new ideas were constantly being integrated into construction projects. People looked forward to benefiting from these advances and were proud if their town was the first to boast a particular new type of construction. Unfortunately, some of these new ideas failed.

      The Achilles heel of the Silver Bridge was its suspension system. The bridge used interlinked chains of eyebars to support the bridge deck instead of traditional cables. At the time, eyebar suspension was thought to hold several advantages over conventional designs. In practice, any advantages were greatly outweighed by the difficulty the eyebars posed to inspection and maintenance. To an inspector, a suspension chain might appear to be in perfect working order. However, because the eyebars overlapped at connection points, undetected corrosion could form on the concealed eyebar heads.

      On December 15, 1967, during the height of rush hour, a corroded eyebar on the Ohio side of the river broke. This single failure caused the entire Silver Bridge to catastrophically collapse, dropping 31 vehicles and 64 people into the river and a debris pile onto the Ohio shoreline. With 46 fatalities, the fall of the Silver Bridge ranks as the worst roadway bridge collapse in US history. The exceptionally high number of casualties was a result of several factors. First, the bridge was loaded with bumper-to-bumper traffic when it fell. Second, most vehicles ended up in the frigid December waters of the Ohio River, and it took several minutes for rescue boats to arrive at the scene. Many victims never got out of their vehicles. Some of those who did escape were injured and drowned before help could reach them.

      For some, bridges are always a mixed blessing. The benefit of being able to cross from one shore to another is balanced by the concerns of being high off the ground, confined within a relatively small area—inside the railings of the bridge—and being over large bodies of water. Gephyrophobia is the scientific name for the fear of crossing bridges. In some cases, this fear is so extreme that motorists drive many miles out of their way to avoid bridges. In other cases, people hire drivers to take them across particularly frightening spans, such as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland or the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York. For many, the greatest fear is that the bridge will collapse.

      Thankfully, bridge collapses are rare. Most bridges are well built, well maintained, and perfectly safe. When bridges do fall, it is usually because they have been damaged by an accident or natural disaster. Since 1900, a total of 19 major roadway bridges have collapsed in the United States. About half of these fell because ships collided with them or because major traffic accidents occurred on them. Bridges have also fallen because of river scour, shifting riverbeds, ice collisions, and earthquakes. Only five bridges, including the Silver Bridge, have collapsed because of poor design or improper maintenance.

      One of the better-known bridge collapses was the fall of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which crossed a portion of the Puget Sound in Washington State, in November 1940. The bridge was not well designed for its location, and high winds caused the bridge deck to buckle dramatically. On November 7, the bridge’s amazing oscillations—at the time, the deck was bending up to 28 feet high—and catastrophic collapse were captured by film crews. Fortunately, no one was killed.

      More recently, in August 2007, the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapsed due to a design error. Like the Silver Bridge, the Minneapolis Bridge fell during rush hour. At the time, 111 vehicles were on the bridge and 13 people died. The direct cause of this collapse was the presence of undersized gusset plates coupled with an increase in bridge weight from roadway upgrades. Gusset plates are steel plates used to connect beams and girders to columns. Because the gusset plates used in the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge were too small, they could not support the increased weight of the bridge.

      The collapse of the Silver Bridge was a watershed moment for US civil engineering and for the oversight and maintenance of highway infrastructure. As a direct result of the collapse, a nationwide inspection of bridges was undertaken. Many were found to be in dangerous condition and in desperate need of maintenance. The widespread repairs brought about by the fall of the Silver Bridge almost certainly prevented additional collapses. As a long-term engineering legacy, modern bridge construction now devotes additional attention to the soundness and safety of support and truss design.

      These reforms are the silver lining of the Silver

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