Debris from the accident — which spilled onto southbound Interstate 75 near Mitchell Avenue and shut down the strip of highway — was cleaned up earlier than expected Tuesday night and allowed the highway to reopen.
But work to determine the cause of the collapse that killed Brandon Carl of Kentucky and injured another man has just begun, highway officials say.
An Occupational Safety and Health Administration report will take between three and six months at least to complete, OSHA spokesman Scott Allen told this newspaper.
“I haven’t seen a fatality investigation complete in less than three months,” Allen said. The federal agency conducted 4,500 fatal work injuries during 2013.
Allen said investigators were on the scene again Wednesday and plan to interview the employer as well as witnesses who saw the Hopple Street bridge, and a track hoe that was helping with repair, come crashing down Monday night. Engineers will also help recreate the crash.
The bridge was structurally sound at the time of its collapse, meaning investigators are narrowing in on human error as the cause of the collapse.
Carl, and roughly 10 other construction workers, were dismantling the bridge when it flattened the highway around 10:30 p.m. Monday. Carl’s body was discovered just before 3 a.m. Tuesday. A truck driver was also injured in the crash and taken to a nearby hospital.
Kokosing Construction Inc., an Ohio-based contractor who’s working on a $90.7 million overhaul of the highway stretch and viaduct, cleaned up the mess in 24 hours.
State officials won’t decide if Kokosing will pay for clean-up or delay fees until the OSHA report is released, said Ohio Department of Transportation spokesman Brian Cunningham.
“There are a lot of factors that will be considered,” Cunningham said. “That’s going to take some time to determine — to finalize those scenarios and the financial aspect of things.”
Aside from clean-up costs, state documents show Kokosing agreed to financial disincentives for unexpected lane closures like the one that occurred after the bridge collapse. Charges include $3,000 for every 15 minutes that a highway lane is unexpectedly closed.
The stretch of southbound I-75 shutdown for 24 hours this week has four lanes — which could cost a company more than $1 million under the state’s agreement.
Any financial obligations the company faces could be negotiated though, Cunningham said.
He said once the debris from the bridge was cleaned up, crews discovered minimal damage to I-75.
“Essentially, it was like filling a large pothole,” Cunningham said of the slight damage to the highway. “Unfortunately, a tragic situation occurred and things aligned and (clean-up) moved very rapidly.”
Highway officials praised Kokosing’s reputation during a press conference Tuesday. The construction company handled $225 million worth of projects for the state last year. OSHA investigators also confirmed that while the company has received two safety citations since 2010, it has a good history of workplace safety.
Monday’s bridge deconstruction was the last of five bridges that Kokosing dismantled as part of the construction overhaul on the Cincinnati highway, Cunningham said. No additional work needs to be done to remove the bridge after the collapse, he added.
Bridges are more likely to collapse randomly than during the demolition process, said forensic and failure analysis engineer Mike Mariscalco of QEI Engineers, Inc. in Dayton. He also said federal investigators will likely look at the demolition plan and question why the highway wasn’t closed while the bridge was dismantled overhead.
“The bridge fell down as a result of some combination of human intervention and reduced structural stability,” Mariscalco said. “It seems clear that there was someone who was missing something with how the remaining structure was being loaded (by) this poor fellow.”
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