[Gutenberg 30223] • Bridge Disasters in America: The Cause and the Remedy

Excerpt from Bridge Disasters in America: The Cause and the Remedy: *A few years ago an iron highway bridge at Dixon, III., fell, while a crowd was upon it, and killed sixty persons. The briefest inspection of that bridge by any competent engineer would have been sure to condemn it. A few years later the Ashtabula bridge, upon the Lake Shore Railroad, broke down under a passenger train, and killed from 80 to 100 passengers. The report of the committee of the Ohio Legislature appointed to investigate that disaster concluded, first, that the bridge went down under an ordinary load by reason of defects in its original construction; and, secondly, that the defects in the original construction of the bridge could have been discovered at any time after its erection by careful examination. Hardly had the public recovered from the shock of this terrible disaster when the Tariffville calamity added its list of dead and wounded to the long roll already charged to the ignorance and recklessness which characterizes so much of the management of the public works in this country.

There are many bridges now in use upon our railroads in no way better than those at Ashtabula and Tariffville, and which await only the right combination of circumstances to tumble down. There are, by the laws of chance, just so many persons who are going to be killed on those bridges. There are hundreds of highway bridges now in daily use which are in no way safer than the bridge at Dixon was, and which would certainly be condemned by five minutes of competent and honest inspection. More than that, many of them have already been condemned, as unfit for public use, but yet they are allowed to remain, and invite the disaster which is sure to come. Can nothing be done to prevent this reckless and wicked waste of human life? Can we not have some system of public control of public works which shall secure the public safety? *