July 9, 2025 • 41 mins
On December 15, 1967, during rush hour traffic, the Silver Bridge spanning the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio, suddenly collapsed in less than a minute, claiming 46 lives. Discover how a microscopic crack just one-tenth of an inch deep in a single eyebar brought down an entire bridge that had stood for nearly four decades. Learn about the innovative but flawed engineering decisions that prioritized cost savings over redundancy, and explore how this disaster forever changed America's approach to infrastructure inspection and maintenance. Plus, delve into the mysterious Mothman sightings that occurred in the months leading up to the collapse and how this legend became intertwined with the tragedy in local folklore.
SOURCES:
- Wikipedia entry on the Silver Bridge disaster
- National Transportation Safety Board accident report
- National Geographic's "The Collapse of West Virginia's Silver Bridge" from their Atlas of Cursed Places series
FIND FINAL BOARDING CALL ONLINE:
- Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
- Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod
- Facebook: Final Boarding Call
CREDITS:
Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Picture this, it's December 15th, 1967,five o'clock on a freezing winter evening.
You're driving home after a long work day.
Christmas shopping bags in yourbackseat Then without warning,
the bridge beneath you, lurches violentlyin less than a minute, 46 lives will
(00:24):
be lost in one of America's mostcatastrophic infrastructure failures, all
because of a microscopic crack smaller.
Then the thickness of a dime.
So stow your tray tables, fastenyour seat belts, and prepare for
some extreme turbulence becausethis is final boarding call.
(00:48):
Ba bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
Nice.
Thank you Zach.
That was good.
Somebody needed to do it.
Oh, I appreciate that.
I wanna just upfront before wedive too far in, apologize for
any background noise that ourlisteners might hear in this episode.
Our toddler is asleep, which isgreat, and we're trying something
new so that this isn't like an A SMRpodcast and we're recording outside.
(01:13):
Crazy.
Well, I am not gonna apologize.
I'm not that guy.
You're not.
You guys could deal with it.
Chronic apologies are not my thing.
Will You also grab my drink?
I think I have a LaCroix inside.
Oh my God.
Thank you.
I appreciate you.
You're the neatest wife I've ever had.
I am the neediest wife you've ever had.
Oh boy.
Bless you, Zachary.
(01:34):
Yep.
Oh, it's that good stuff.
Static water, as Zach calls it.
I love LaCroix.
Well, if you love the flavor of yellingat a bottle of water and pretending it's
gonna change it, then LaCroix is for you.
Hello and welcome to Final Boarding Call.
I am your disaster obsessed host,Alice, and I'm her no-nonsense husband
(01:59):
because tonight we got thanks to watch.
So we're gonna tellyou a fun little story.
We are.
Before we continue living our lives,it's formula drift night, which in
our house is essentially a religion.
And it's, we, we are recording thisepisode before watching the next
round of battles and formula drift.
(02:20):
So we got shit to doin places to be folks.
Our bet is the place that we're gonna be.
That's it.
Yeah, snuggles and drift and boom, boom.
Okay.
Before we dive in, quick reminder topeople please rate review and some don't.
I saw you were about to do it.
I, no.
Please rate review.
(02:40):
Please like rate, review, and subscribewherever you get your podcasts.
I love you.
All right.
My sources for this episodeinclude picture this, no, stop.
My sources for this episode include theWikipedia entry on the Silver Bridge
disaster, the National TransportationSafety Boards Accident Report, the
(03:01):
National Geographics, the Collapseof West Virginia Silver Bridge from
their Atlas of Cursed Places serieswhich was actually really great.
So let's dive in folks.
Head first.
The story of the SilverBridge begins in the 1920s.
(03:24):
Wows, we know I love the 1920s.
They were roaring.
Oh my God, they were roaring.
Four years residents of Point,pleasant West Virginia and Gala.
I almost said Galapagos, Ohio.
It's Gallipolis sorry if you're fromOhio and deeply offended, but it's
Sure shit is not Galapagos, Ohio.
(03:45):
You know what'll bring 'em back in?
US recognizing that Ohio is for lovers.
Oh, it's all right.
So anyways the residents ofthese places had to rely on
ferries to cross the Ohio River.
This was inconvenient and timeconsuming, especially as automobile
ownership increased a bridge.
(04:05):
Connecting these communities wouldstimulate economic growth and
make daily life much easier forresidents on both sides of the river.
Eh?
Nah.
Makes sense.
People are buying cars.
They wanna be able to drive theircars, and we have bridges now.
I can't imagine life without a bridge.
So true.
Construction of the bridge beganin 1926 and was completed in 1928.
(04:32):
So.
In the twenties, they managed to buildan entire bridge in less time than it
has taken them to put in a median ina, in a street that's like across from
ours, that's been under constructionfor three and a half effing years
and still calls for another two.
Oh my gosh.
(04:53):
Officially named thePoint Pleasant Bridge.
It quickly became known as the SilverBridge due to its distinctive aluminum
paint that gave it a silvery appearance.
Bet you couldn't guess that.
Shiny.
Yeah.
Could you have guessed that thesilver bridge was actually silvery?
I don't, no.
I was actually kind of picturing platinum.
(05:13):
Oh oh.
Ing the silver Bridge was an ibar chainsuspension bridge A design that had been
used for about a century at that point.
which I will talk about.
So like, hold your horses.
'cause you're probably, unless you'relike a real bridge person, I already know.
Wait, you, do you know what that means?
(05:34):
Yes.
God damn people.
I need a new host.
Auditions will be held.
And just send me a, send me a message.
She does in fact need a new host.
I quit it, man.
But the Silver Bridge incorporatedsome innovative features that set it
apart from earlier bridges of thistype traditional suspension bridges.
(05:57):
Think the Brooklyn Bridge, right?
One of the most well-knownbridges in the world.
It uses cables made up ofthousands of individual wires
that are all bundled up together.
So if one wire fails, the load isdistributed among thousands of others.
Which provides redundancy.
(06:18):
Drink the silver bridge.
Nobody by you cares about your redundancy.
I think anybody who's been on the BrooklynBridge probably cares about redundancy.
They don't know that theycare about redundancy.
Nobody does sack.
Nobody does.
That's, that's really thepoint of this podcast is to
bring awareness to redundancy.
(06:40):
Okay?
The Silver Bridge used acompletely different approach.
So instead of cables, theSilver Bridge used chains.
Of eye bars, which if you are likeme and less like Zach and you're
like, what the hell is that?
It's long, flat steel bars with acircular hole or I at each end, right?
(07:07):
Is that correct, Zach?
Indeedly do.
Okay, wonderful.
And these eyes are connectedby huge pins, which creates.
A chain and that supports the bridge.
Boom.
Each link in the chain consistsof just two ibar side by side.
(07:28):
Cool.
Love it.
Simplistic.
Simplistic.
Yes.
Sounds like it's not gonna fail.
Yeah.
Oh, this is gonna be areally boring episode.
It's just, it's almost over.
It's just about a bridge.
A bridge.
Yeah.
That just Great.
They built it in the twenties.
Great job.
The eye bars were made of a newhigh strength steel that had more
(07:50):
than twice the tensile strength.
Of other steels of that era, thestronger steel meant fewer ibar were
needed per link, just two comparedto the four to six that were used
in earlier Ibar bridges suckers.
While this design choice reduced costsand weight, it also reduced redundancy.
(08:16):
Drank with only two ibar per.
That bird really wants tobe involved in the podcast.
He's got something to say about Ibar.
He's passionate with onlytwo eye bars per link.
The failure of one would place enormousstress on the other, potentially
(08:37):
leading to catastrophic failure.
It's like if you and I were carryinga heavy couch and I just decided I was
done and I dropped my end of the couch.
I would suddenly have to supportan extra 4% of the weight.
I hate this game.
Look, I'm only here to make jokes.
(08:58):
There's no other reasonto have me on here.
The people love you.
And by that I mean our five anda half regular listeners, but
they you Yeah, but that one in,in Switzerland is here for me.
I think it's Netherlands.
I think we've be in the Netherlandswho like gets down on this
podcast, shout out to you.
God bless you, person Inthe Ne Netherlands person.
I almost said the Netherlandsnever, never land.
(09:20):
Ugh.
Okay.
Well,
you got it.
Two normal people are holding a couch.
One of them drops it.
The other one now has tohold a shit ton more weight.
Boom.
Another innovative feature was therocker design of the towers that
supported the suspension chains.
Unlike traditional fixed base towers.
(09:41):
These towers could tilt slightlyat their bases in response to
unbalanced loading or temperaturechanges, which is really smart.
I mean, buildings, bridges,things like that, are supposed
to be able to move within reason.
Because this design reduces stress onthe towers and it use less material,
(10:04):
making them cheaper to build.
However, there's always a, however,however, the Rocker towers, oh shit.
We now have a bee on the podcast.
No guy, get outta here.
Get outta here, guy.
I don't have my hat to beat him to death.
No, let's not beat the bees.
(10:24):
They're not endangered anymore.
I can do what I want.
God, that's so bad.
And that's not a B, that'sstill a hornet of types.
Don't, please don't piss him off, Zachary.
Ah,
I hate this.
Oh, I love nature.
I do.
(10:45):
Well, I fucking hate it.
Okay.
However.
The rocker towers had a critical weakness.
They relied entirely on the tension in thesuspension chains to keep them upright.
So if a chain broke, there was nothingto prevent the towers from falling.
They tipple topple.
(11:06):
Imagine a tent bull that's only keptupright by the tension in the tent fabric.
If the fabric tears, the pole will fall.
When the Silver Bridge opened in 1928,it was a marvel of modern engineering.
Its 1,760 foot span provided avital link across the Ohio River.
(11:30):
The bridge was designed tohandle the traffic and vehicle
weights of the late 1920s.
Dim vehicles wasn't that heavy.
Yes.
Yes, this thing was madefor literally like Model Ts.
Nobody could have anticipated howstupid heavy automobiles and trucks
would get over the next four decades.
(11:53):
For 39 years, the Silver Bridgefaithfully served the communities
on both sides of the river, and itreally became an essential part of us.
Route 35, which is a majortransportation artery.
Yeah.
By 1967, the bridge was carrying far moretraffic than it had been designed for,
(12:14):
including large trucks that weren't, yeah,were not even imagined when the bridge
was built, but beneath its silver paint,an invisible flaw was slowly growing a
teeny tiny crack that would eventually.
Lead to disaster.
(12:36):
So let's talk about December 15th, 1967.
My mom was about tocelebrate her first birthday.
That's fun.
Happy birthday, mom.
Okay.
December 15th, 1967 Was a cold Fridayin Point Pleasant West Virginia.
Christmas was just 10 days away andmany people were out shopping for gifts.
(13:01):
The workday was coming to an end andtraffic was building on the silver bridge
as commuters headed home for the weekend.
Oh dogs.
Our dogs are terrible.
Veggie, come here Gie.
Come here.
Benjamin Pinchy.
Ugh.
Oh, and then he comes walkingover like he's all old and sweet
(13:23):
and couldn't do anything wrong.
dog.
Oh, naughty boy.
He's a naughty boy.
But he's so cute.
Okay.
You like how gently I, yes.
Boop.
His nose versus And hejust gets so offended.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's sensitive.
At approximately 4:58 PM rush hourswas at its peak, which is funny
(13:43):
because a lot has changed since 1967.
But, but not that, not rush hour.
The bridge was crowded with vehicles.
Witnesses would later report hearinga loud sound variously described as
a crack gunshot or a snapping noise.
Hmm.
Followed by an eerie groaningof metal under stress.
(14:08):
And I feel like we've all kind of heardthat from like, like movies, you know?
Yeah.
Like that.
Oh, totally, totally.
Right now, apocalyptic movies,you know, zombie movies, all these
people were trying to get home.
They had Christmaspresents and everything.
This is just telling me, waituntil Christmas Eve to shop.
Oh, Zachary, it's the easiest.
(14:30):
No, you stress me out.
There's less people out.
Okay.
Charleston Gazette reporter, Ruth Finleywas in her car in the westbound lane
heading from Point Pleasant toward Ohio.
When she noticed something strange,and this is a quote, the bridge
was just shaking, vibrating.
(14:51):
We were moving, but the bridge seemedto be moving in the opposite direction.
Hmm.
Well, I hate that.
What happened next wouldunfold with terrifying speed.
In less than a minute, the entirestructure of the Silver Bridge collapsed
into the icy Ohio River, dragging withit 31 vehicles and their occupants.
(15:14):
Charlene, what were you gonna say, baby?
I said eek.
Yeah, I mean that's like, that's bad.
Charlene Wood, who was drivingtoward Point Pleasant from the
Ohio side had a narrow escape.
She had just reached the WestVirginia side when she felt
the bridge give way behind her.
Her car made it to solid ground,but the vehicle behind her didn't.
(15:38):
That's as close as it can get.
It doesn't get, you'rethe last one to get there.
You're the last one toget over the bridge.
That's crazy.
And this is a quote from her.
I looked in my rear viewmirror and the bridge was gone.
Just gone, oh God.
From the banks of the river witnesseswatched in horror as the silver bridge,
(15:59):
a structure that had been part ofthe landscape for almost four decades
literally disappeared into the water.
The collapse happened so quickly that manyvictims had no time to react or escape.
And that's crazy.
Like it's it poof gone.
I complain when they start fixingbridges before they break, but also
(16:20):
like broken bridges are a problem.
So yeah, honey.
I was like, but was it reallygonna break or do we just
take safety too seriously now?
No, ES are really scary.
Okay, here we go.
The temperature that day wasaround 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
So, you know, just a nicebalmy, warm day in Ohio.
(16:44):
No, it, that's freezing.
Literally.
And the Ohio River was cold enoughto induce hypothermia within minutes.
It's, Darkness was already falling, makingrescue efforts even more challenging.
Local emergency services respondedquickly, but they were really overwhelmed
by the scale of this disaster.
(17:05):
Yeah, this is somethingyou can't really train for.
You call 9 1 1.
It's, and they're just like let usknow when you get to the hospital and
we'll try to take care of you on earth.
Howard Boggs a point pleasant resident wasamong those who rushed to the riverbank
to help and uh, he said it was chaos.
(17:26):
You could hear peoplescreaming from the water.
We tried to reach them, but the currentwas strong and it was getting dark fast.
Oh God.
I didn't even think aboutthe current rivers move.
Yes, but like it's already bad enough thatyou were in a car, the bridge collapsed.
You're now in the river.
Like that's all very bad andvery scary, and now you have
(17:49):
to deal with a current rescue.
Boats were launched.
And divers braved the frigidwaters in search of survivors.
But the combination of cold, thecurrent, and the darkness made
their task nearly impossible.
21 bodies were recoveredfrom the river that night.
(18:09):
More would be found inthe days that followed.
In total 46 people would lose their lives.
Wow.
More people found later onthan the day that it happened.
Yep.
Yeah.
Although two bodies were actuallynever recovered, so the victims
(18:30):
ranged in age from 18 to 74and and included entire family.
Two bodies.
Those of Maxine Turner andKathy Bias were never recovered.
Despite extensive search efforts.
The Silver Bridge collapsewas the worst bridge disaster
(18:50):
in US history at that time.
It left two communities devastated, andit raised serious questions about the
safety of America's aging infrastructureas news of the disaster spread.
The nation was shocked.
Okay, president Lyndon Johnson.
Lyndon b Johnson ordered animmediate investigation into
the cause of the collapse.
(19:12):
The National Transportation SafetyBoard, our friends at the NTSB, which had
been created only nine months earlier,would lead the effort to determine
what had gone so catastrophicallywrong, and the investigation would
be one of the most thorough andtechnically complex of its era.
(19:34):
Eventually uncovering a, that doomedthe bridge and those crossing it,
that fateful December evening.
Let's get nerdy.
All right.
The investigation into the SilverBridge collapse was a biggie.
Pieces of the bridge had to be recoveredfrom the river, a challenge complicated
(20:00):
by the Ohio River's, strong, current,and near freezing temperatures.
The wreckage was scattered over alarge area and many components had
been damaged by the collapse itself.
Making it hard to determinewhat was preexisting.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Kind of similar to aplane crash, honestly.
(20:21):
But there's no black box.
Oh, sucky little fox.
There is not a black box.
So we're going to have to listen to thebridge itself to hear what she has to say.
This was old school recovery work.
We are talking divers and freezing water,manually retrieving pieces of the bridge.
(20:43):
The NTSB enlisted help from multipleagencies, which help is good.
They got help from the NationalBureau of Standards, which nowadays
we know is the National Instituteof Standards and Technology.
I actually didn't.
Know that, but it's, that'sjust what it's called now.
Nist.
Yeah.
(21:03):
I'm not,
it's good old nist.
And the Bureau of Public Roads, theirgoal , was to determine not just
what had happened, but why and how toprevent similar disasters in the future.
Early in the investigation, the fallentowers provided a really crucial clue.
(21:26):
So both towers had fallen eastward towardthe West Virginia side of the river.
This indicated that a chain break hadoccurred somewhere west of the Ohio Tower.
Had the break occurred in the centerof the span, the towers would've
(21:47):
fallen in opposite direction.
Physics.
As investigators examined the recoveredwreckage, their attention focused on
the suspension chains, they noticedthat one particular link, Ibar 3 3 0,
(22:09):
showed signs of failure unlike the other.
Literally the broken link, the weak link.
Okay.
This eye bar was part, people died.
It's not funny.
I Okay it.
It, yes, people diedand that it is horrible.
It's terrible's.
Also, it's the weak link.
(22:30):
This ibar was part of the Ohio sidesuspension chain consistent with
what the fallen towers had suggested.
Detailed metallurgical analysis,which is an analysis of metal,
like surgical, but metallurgical.
How crazy is that?
That's a real Word.
(22:51):
I did not make that up.
I, I know.
All right.
Anyway, they did an analysisof I Bar three 30 and it
revealed something startling.
The I bar had failed due to a tinycrack, and I mean a tiny crack.
(23:14):
This thing was 0.1
inches.
0.1
inches, 2.5
millimeters deep, and it waslocated in one of the eyes
where it connected to a pin
that crack had formed at a stresspoint and had grown over time
through a process called stress,corrosion, cracking good old sk.
(23:41):
What sk
What's particularly significantis that this flaw would've been
virtually impossible to detectthrough visual inspection.
Okay?
It was located inside the jointhidden from view by the massive
pin that connected the eye ibar.
(24:03):
So the only way to have found itwould've been to disassemble the bridge.
That's not how that works.
No, that's insane.
And it also feels likea really bad design.
You know, that like there's a thingthat could have failed, but you can't
check to see how it's doing withoutcompletely taking apart the entire bridge.
(24:29):
Woof.
The investigation also found that thefailure of this single eye bar had
triggered a catastrophic chain reaction.
Chain reaction.
Mm-hmm.
Chain reaction.
Oh, there we go.
Good.
Okay.
Whoa.
I'm so funny.
When one side of Ibar three 30 failedall of the load transferred to the other
(24:54):
side, as in two people carrying a couch.
And one of them drops it.
Okay?
So that happened and thatimmediately made the other side
fail due to the crazy stress.
So now all of a sudden, thatside also dropped to the couch.
The joint was then held together byonly three eye bars from other links,
(25:18):
and another ibar slipped off the pincausing this chain to completely.
Separate.
Hmm.
Boom.
Once a suspension chain wassevered, collapse of the entire
structure was inevitable.
So all parts of the suspensionbridge exist in a state of perfect
(25:38):
equilibrium with each other.
And the second that that equilibriumis broken in any way, there was nothing
to stop this bridge from falling.
That's dumb.
Where's the redundancy drink?
Importantly, the investigation foundno evidence that the bridge was
(26:01):
overloaded at the time of the collapse.
So despite the Bridge's age inthe heavy traffic of that day,
the load that it was carrying wasstill within its design capacity.
In fact, the section wherethe failure occurred.
Was at less than half the maximumload that it was designed to
(26:24):
handle when the collapse began.
This was not a case of too manyvehicles or too much weight.
It was a hidden defect that had beengrowing silently for years possible
duck until it reached a critical point.
(26:44):
And in the final NTSB report, whichwas released in 1973 years after the
collapse that report concluded thatthe silver bridge failed due to a
cleavage fracture in the lower limbof the North eye bar of the Ohio side.
Suspension.
Chain cleavage should always cleavage,have a crack cleavage fracture.
(27:08):
Cleavage should always have a crack.
No, not on a bridge, baby.
Not on a bridge.
The fracture was caused by stress,corrosion, cracking, and corrosion
fatigue, which was exasperated.
That's a tough one to say.
Exasperated by the lack ofredundancy drink in the design.
(27:29):
The report noted that.
Had there been three or fourmore ibar per link which was
common for earlier Ibar bridges.
The failure of one ibar would probablynot have led to this disaster.
The choice to use only two ibar perlink while new and innovative and
(27:52):
economic at the time it killed people.
I mean, plain and simple peopledied because of that choice.
As National Geographics, Atlas of CursedPlaces highlighted the critical factor
was redundancy drink or lack thereof.
And they had this reallycool guy on the documentary.
(28:14):
His name was Matt Heon.
Heon, H-E-B-O-O-N.
He's a civil engineer and hedemonstrated the bridge failure
with a model, and he explained the.
This is a quote.
The original designs for this bridgecalled for a suspension cable, but they
decided to opt for a less redundantsystem with the ibar chains, which
(28:35):
allowed them to dramatically reducethe cost, but it also dramatically
reduced the redundancy in the system.
And I included that quote becauseit says redundancy, redundancy
twice, double drank in the bluntassessment of structural engineering.
Redundancy is safety.
I mean, that's it.
If you say redundancy one more time.
(28:57):
I swear to God
I love you so much.
We are gonna wrap up thisepisode here with a legend story.
Oh, let's talk about somethingspooky ooky, shall we?
Okay.
So.
This is actually what I thoughtwas most fascinating about this
(29:18):
case obviously it's terrifying.
It's part of history, bridge historyin particular, but there is a moth
man legend that is attached to this.
I think I've heard of that.
Oh, we gotta talk about it.
Okay.
In the 13 months leadingup to the bridge collapse.
(29:38):
Residents of point pleasant reportedsightings of a strange creature that
would come to be known as the north man.
The first reported sighting occurredon November 12th, 1966 when five
(29:58):
men working in a cemetery in WestVirginia claimed to see a man-like
figure flying low over the tree.
Geez.
Weird.
Cool.
Okay.
Very large Bat.
Superman.
Superman.
(30:19):
Large flying squirrel.
Three days later on November15th, two young couples, Roger
and Linda Scar, what a name.
And then Steve and Mary Ti.
Reported a similar encounter whiledriving near an abandoned World
War II TNT factory, outside Point,pleasant, and that's a cool date.
(30:44):
Just saying they described a large,great creature with glowing red
eyes and a wingspan of 10 feet thatfollowed their car as they sped away.
Keepers creepers.
That's a big ass bat.
10 foot wingspan.
Seven.
I'm gonna put you downlike a vulture maybe.
(31:05):
I don't know.
Okay.
In the following months, more than 100people claimed to have seen the moth man.
Reports typically describeda tall man-like figure with
wings and glowing red eyes.
Sightings continued untilthe Silver bridge collapsed.
(31:26):
After which they abruptly ceased.
It is weird that they suddenly stopped.
Mm.
Author and journalist, John Keelinvestigated these sightings and
he published his findings in the1975 book, the Moth Man Prophecies.
So that's fun.
(31:47):
Keel suggested a connectionbetween the Moth man sightings
and the bridge collapse, implyingthat the creature may have been
a sign of the impending disaster.
His book was later adapted into a2002 film starring Richard Greer.
Which further cemented the linkbetween the Moth Man and the
Silver Bridge in Popular Culture
(32:08):
Some pleasant point.
Residents believe that the Mothman was trying to warn them about
the Bridges imp pending failures.
Others see it as a more sinisterpresence he wanted to kill that
somehow caused the disaster.
Did he need souls Kullu?
Is that you?
Scientists and skepticsof course attribute the
(32:30):
sightings to, oh, here we go.
These are some other thingsthat people think it is.
Mis identifications of bar novels,herons, other large birds potentially
combined with heightened suggestibility.
And the psychological phenomenonknown as mass hysteria,
(32:53):
or it could be moth Man.
Point Pleasant has embraced theMoth man as part of its identity.
The town features a moth man museum.
A museum for a fake thing.
I, I wanna go so bad.
A 12 foot tall, stainless steel moth manstatue and an annual moth man festival.
(33:17):
In September and it drawsthousands of visitors.
Is that where they burn theship down ships down in the bay?
No, I don't think so.
Okay.
I don't know what that wouldhave to do with Moth, man.
I don't know what Moth man hasto do with a fucking bridge.
He made a bridge collapse.
Zach, have you not been listening?
(33:39):
This commercialization has led to whatsome researchers term narrative hijacking,
shifting the focus away from the actualtragedy to this really bizarre legend.
So, I mean, for the locals Moth Man andthe Silver Bridge are now kind of one in
the same like it is, it's science, it'smyth, it's a legend, it's all of that.
(34:02):
I.
And to think it was just a manthat built some wings so that
he could learn how to fly.
Oh God.
Oh no.
Oh no.
It's just the, it's just the local nut.
Yeah.
Just some guy couldn't afford, God dammit.
Bobby.
Bobby.
Okay.
(34:22):
Oh boy.
So, as you can probably imagine, um.
the collapse of the SilverBridge had immediate and also
far reaching consequences.
The most obvious was the severanceof West Virginia and Ohio.
Mm-hmm.
So there was once a bridge that was avital bridge connecting these two places.
(34:45):
The bridge doesn't exist anymore.
Now people can't get to work.
Yes.
I mean, residents who hadbecome accustomed to easy
access across the river.
Had to make a 40 mile detour e thatmakes getting to work a real bitch.
I just quit.
I quit and there's noworking remotely in 1967.
(35:07):
I don't even have to take 40steps to the shop and I quit.
Cute economic activity in bothareas was severely impacted.
Businesses that relied on cross rivertraffic struggled, and communities
that had grown together overthose four decades were separated.
The disaster also left psychologicalscars , many residents lost.
(35:29):
Friends, family members.
Some survivors experienced guiltfor having made it across just
before this disaster happened.
Also, there was some PTSDwith crossing bridges.
I mean, same.
That would be so scaryto witness that and then.
. Perhaps the most significant impactof the Silver Bridge collapse was
(35:51):
on national infrastructure policy.
This disaster exposed a criticalgap in how bridges were maintained
and inspected in the United States.
Prior to the Silver Bridge collapse,there was no national standard.
For bridge inspection, bridges wereinspected by their owners all willy-nilly
(36:13):
state local governments, and they all usedbasically criteria that they just made up.
Does it support my body weight?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Some bridges might go years withoutan inspection and there was no
systematic approach to identifyingany potential structural issues.
Before they became critical, theSilver Bridge disaster changed that.
(36:38):
So in 1968, just months after thecollapse, congress included a provision
in the Federal Aid Highway Act thatestablished the National Bridge
Inspection Standards, baaing baa Boom.
And just like how it sounds, thisis literally a program that is
mandated and standardizes inspectionsfor all bridges on public roads.
(37:01):
So that's great.
I mean, this is the first timewhere there's like actual consistent
criteria to see if a bridge is safe.
It, it seems like thatshould have happened before
1968, but that's, it's fine.
That's fine.
Countless lives weresaved because of this act.
(37:22):
So many bridges that had issueswere actually flagged and caught
during inspections, so that's great.
There were only two other bridges builtto a design similar to the Silver Bridge.
One was at St.
Mary's, West Virginia, which wasjust upstream of the Ohio River.
(37:43):
After the point pleasant disaster.
It was closed to traffic and itactually was demolished in 1971.
Hell yeah, brother.
The other bridge was significantly longerand it was actually located in Brazil.
And it remained in service until1991 when it was closed due
to high levels of corrosion.
This is Brazil.
(38:03):
Yeah, it is in Brazil.
Unlike the Silver Bridge, the Brazilianbridge had been built with a little
bit more redundancy, drank four ibarper link instead of just two, which
likely contributed to its longerlifespan after extensive renovation.
It actually reopened in December of 2019.
(38:23):
So let's talk about a replacement forthe Silver Bridge, a new structure.
The Silver Memorial Bridge was builtabout a mile and a half, downstream, 1.3
miles downstream to be exact.
Completed in 1969, it featured a cantylever design, rather than the ibar chain
(38:44):
suspension approach of its predecessor.
The new bridge continues to serveas a vital link between us, Virginia
and Ohio to this day, at the siteof the original bridge, a small
park now features a monument.
To the 46 victims of the disaster.
And each December 15th, thecommunity gathers there to
(39:05):
remember the lives that were lost.
, The Silver bridge, it left itsmark on engineering education.
It's now a case study taught tocivil engineering students worldwide
as a cautionary tale about design.
And redundant sir.
And the importance of that,especially for bridges.
(39:26):
All righty, Zach thatis our story for today.
Well, it seems like wetalk about a lot of death.
I'm not sure if we're obsessed with itor not, but I'm glad bridges have come
a long way because now we have someincredibly long bridges that get used.
(39:49):
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of bridges that are inservice today, we can thank the Silver
Bridge and the lessons learned for.
The current Bridge Safety Standards,I'm gonna call Bridge Builders and
ask them, did you think about theSilver Bridge when you did this?
And if they say, no, I quit.
(40:12):
Benjamin Benjamin put,sir, I don't wanna hear it.
No back talk.
If you enjoyed this episode,please rate, review, and subscribe
wherever you get your podcast.
We have a couple comments on some episodeson Spotify, and that's been really fun.
So keep leaving us comments.
We see them, we read them, we love them.
Thank you, mom.
(40:33):
And you can follow us.
You can follow us on Instagramat Final Boarding Call pod.
We are also on Facebook.
We have a Facebookdiscussion group as well.
We're on email, final boardingcall podcast@gmail.com.
And we also have a website,final boarding call podcast.com
Also, we've gotta give ashout out to our buddy Luke.
(40:54):
Who is a new listener.
And I promised him the nexttime that we recorded that,
I would give him a shout out.
So Luke, this one's for you.
It's a horrible story about abunch of people dying on a bridge.
I hope you liked it.
Listen to it right before bed.
Oh no, don't pull, Simon.
Join us next time when we'll diveinto another transportation disaster.
(41:18):
Until then, remember to stow your traytables, fasten your seat belts, and
prepare for the unexpected because notevery trip reaches its final destination.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
(41:38):
Zach, honey,
Picture this, it's December 15th, 1967,five o'clock on a freezing winter evening.
You're driving home after a long work day.
Christmas shopping bags in yourbackseat Then without warning,
the bridge beneath you, lurches violentlyin less than a minute, 46 lives will
(00:24):
be lost in one of America's mostcatastrophic infrastructure failures, all
because of a microscopic crack smaller.
Then the thickness of a dime.
So stow your tray tables, fastenyour seat belts, and prepare for
some extreme turbulence becausethis is final boarding call.
(00:48):
Ba bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
Nice.
Thank you Zach.
That was good.
Somebody needed to do it.
Oh, I appreciate that.
I wanna just upfront before wedive too far in, apologize for
any background noise that ourlisteners might hear in this episode.
Our toddler is asleep, which isgreat, and we're trying something
new so that this isn't like an A SMRpodcast and we're recording outside.
(01:13):
Crazy.
Well, I am not gonna apologize.
I'm not that guy.
You're not.
You guys could deal with it.
Chronic apologies are not my thing.
Will You also grab my drink?
I think I have a LaCroix inside.
Oh my God.
Thank you.
I appreciate you.
You're the neatest wife I've ever had.
I am the neediest wife you've ever had.
Oh boy.
Bless you, Zachary.
(01:34):
Yep.
Oh, it's that good stuff.
Static water, as Zach calls it.
I love LaCroix.
Well, if you love the flavor of yellingat a bottle of water and pretending it's
gonna change it, then LaCroix is for you.
Hello and welcome to Final Boarding Call.
I am your disaster obsessed host,Alice, and I'm her no-nonsense husband
(01:59):
because tonight we got thanks to watch.
So we're gonna tellyou a fun little story.
We are.
Before we continue living our lives,it's formula drift night, which in
our house is essentially a religion.
And it's, we, we are recording thisepisode before watching the next
round of battles and formula drift.
(02:20):
So we got shit to doin places to be folks.
Our bet is the place that we're gonna be.
That's it.
Yeah, snuggles and drift and boom, boom.
Okay.
Before we dive in, quick reminder topeople please rate review and some don't.
I saw you were about to do it.
I, no.
Please rate review.
(02:40):
Please like rate, review, and subscribewherever you get your podcasts.
I love you.
All right.
My sources for this episodeinclude picture this, no, stop.
My sources for this episode include theWikipedia entry on the Silver Bridge
disaster, the National TransportationSafety Boards Accident Report, the
(03:01):
National Geographics, the Collapseof West Virginia Silver Bridge from
their Atlas of Cursed Places serieswhich was actually really great.
So let's dive in folks.
Head first.
The story of the SilverBridge begins in the 1920s.
(03:24):
Wows, we know I love the 1920s.
They were roaring.
Oh my God, they were roaring.
Four years residents of Point,pleasant West Virginia and Gala.
I almost said Galapagos, Ohio.
It's Gallipolis sorry if you're fromOhio and deeply offended, but it's
Sure shit is not Galapagos, Ohio.
(03:45):
You know what'll bring 'em back in?
US recognizing that Ohio is for lovers.
Oh, it's all right.
So anyways the residents ofthese places had to rely on
ferries to cross the Ohio River.
This was inconvenient and timeconsuming, especially as automobile
ownership increased a bridge.
(04:05):
Connecting these communities wouldstimulate economic growth and
make daily life much easier forresidents on both sides of the river.
Eh?
Nah.
Makes sense.
People are buying cars.
They wanna be able to drive theircars, and we have bridges now.
I can't imagine life without a bridge.
So true.
Construction of the bridge beganin 1926 and was completed in 1928.
(04:32):
So.
In the twenties, they managed to buildan entire bridge in less time than it
has taken them to put in a median ina, in a street that's like across from
ours, that's been under constructionfor three and a half effing years
and still calls for another two.
Oh my gosh.
(04:53):
Officially named thePoint Pleasant Bridge.
It quickly became known as the SilverBridge due to its distinctive aluminum
paint that gave it a silvery appearance.
Bet you couldn't guess that.
Shiny.
Yeah.
Could you have guessed that thesilver bridge was actually silvery?
I don't, no.
I was actually kind of picturing platinum.
(05:13):
Oh oh.
Ing the silver Bridge was an ibar chainsuspension bridge A design that had been
used for about a century at that point.
which I will talk about.
So like, hold your horses.
'cause you're probably, unless you'relike a real bridge person, I already know.
Wait, you, do you know what that means?
(05:34):
Yes.
God damn people.
I need a new host.
Auditions will be held.
And just send me a, send me a message.
She does in fact need a new host.
I quit it, man.
But the Silver Bridge incorporatedsome innovative features that set it
apart from earlier bridges of thistype traditional suspension bridges.
(05:57):
Think the Brooklyn Bridge, right?
One of the most well-knownbridges in the world.
It uses cables made up ofthousands of individual wires
that are all bundled up together.
So if one wire fails, the load isdistributed among thousands of others.
Which provides redundancy.
(06:18):
Drink the silver bridge.
Nobody by you cares about your redundancy.
I think anybody who's been on the BrooklynBridge probably cares about redundancy.
They don't know that theycare about redundancy.
Nobody does sack.
Nobody does.
That's, that's really thepoint of this podcast is to
bring awareness to redundancy.
(06:40):
Okay?
The Silver Bridge used acompletely different approach.
So instead of cables, theSilver Bridge used chains.
Of eye bars, which if you are likeme and less like Zach and you're
like, what the hell is that?
It's long, flat steel bars with acircular hole or I at each end, right?
(07:07):
Is that correct, Zach?
Indeedly do.
Okay, wonderful.
And these eyes are connectedby huge pins, which creates.
A chain and that supports the bridge.
Boom.
Each link in the chain consistsof just two ibar side by side.
(07:28):
Cool.
Love it.
Simplistic.
Simplistic.
Yes.
Sounds like it's not gonna fail.
Yeah.
Oh, this is gonna be areally boring episode.
It's just, it's almost over.
It's just about a bridge.
A bridge.
Yeah.
That just Great.
They built it in the twenties.
Great job.
The eye bars were made of a newhigh strength steel that had more
(07:50):
than twice the tensile strength.
Of other steels of that era, thestronger steel meant fewer ibar were
needed per link, just two comparedto the four to six that were used
in earlier Ibar bridges suckers.
While this design choice reduced costsand weight, it also reduced redundancy.
(08:16):
Drank with only two ibar per.
That bird really wants tobe involved in the podcast.
He's got something to say about Ibar.
He's passionate with onlytwo eye bars per link.
The failure of one would place enormousstress on the other, potentially
(08:37):
leading to catastrophic failure.
It's like if you and I were carryinga heavy couch and I just decided I was
done and I dropped my end of the couch.
I would suddenly have to supportan extra 4% of the weight.
I hate this game.
Look, I'm only here to make jokes.
(08:58):
There's no other reasonto have me on here.
The people love you.
And by that I mean our five anda half regular listeners, but
they you Yeah, but that one in,in Switzerland is here for me.
I think it's Netherlands.
I think we've be in the Netherlandswho like gets down on this
podcast, shout out to you.
God bless you, person Inthe Ne Netherlands person.
I almost said the Netherlandsnever, never land.
(09:20):
Ugh.
Okay.
Well,
you got it.
Two normal people are holding a couch.
One of them drops it.
The other one now has tohold a shit ton more weight.
Boom.
Another innovative feature was therocker design of the towers that
supported the suspension chains.
Unlike traditional fixed base towers.
(09:41):
These towers could tilt slightlyat their bases in response to
unbalanced loading or temperaturechanges, which is really smart.
I mean, buildings, bridges,things like that, are supposed
to be able to move within reason.
Because this design reduces stress onthe towers and it use less material,
(10:04):
making them cheaper to build.
However, there's always a, however,however, the Rocker towers, oh shit.
We now have a bee on the podcast.
No guy, get outta here.
Get outta here, guy.
I don't have my hat to beat him to death.
No, let's not beat the bees.
(10:24):
They're not endangered anymore.
I can do what I want.
God, that's so bad.
And that's not a B, that'sstill a hornet of types.
Don't, please don't piss him off, Zachary.
Ah,
I hate this.
Oh, I love nature.
I do.
(10:45):
Well, I fucking hate it.
Okay.
However.
The rocker towers had a critical weakness.
They relied entirely on the tension in thesuspension chains to keep them upright.
So if a chain broke, there was nothingto prevent the towers from falling.
They tipple topple.
(11:06):
Imagine a tent bull that's only keptupright by the tension in the tent fabric.
If the fabric tears, the pole will fall.
When the Silver Bridge opened in 1928,it was a marvel of modern engineering.
Its 1,760 foot span provided avital link across the Ohio River.
(11:30):
The bridge was designed tohandle the traffic and vehicle
weights of the late 1920s.
Dim vehicles wasn't that heavy.
Yes.
Yes, this thing was madefor literally like Model Ts.
Nobody could have anticipated howstupid heavy automobiles and trucks
would get over the next four decades.
(11:53):
For 39 years, the Silver Bridgefaithfully served the communities
on both sides of the river, and itreally became an essential part of us.
Route 35, which is a majortransportation artery.
Yeah.
By 1967, the bridge was carrying far moretraffic than it had been designed for,
(12:14):
including large trucks that weren't, yeah,were not even imagined when the bridge
was built, but beneath its silver paint,an invisible flaw was slowly growing a
teeny tiny crack that would eventually.
Lead to disaster.
(12:36):
So let's talk about December 15th, 1967.
My mom was about tocelebrate her first birthday.
That's fun.
Happy birthday, mom.
Okay.
December 15th, 1967 Was a cold Fridayin Point Pleasant West Virginia.
Christmas was just 10 days away andmany people were out shopping for gifts.
(13:01):
The workday was coming to an end andtraffic was building on the silver bridge
as commuters headed home for the weekend.
Oh dogs.
Our dogs are terrible.
Veggie, come here Gie.
Come here.
Benjamin Pinchy.
Ugh.
Oh, and then he comes walkingover like he's all old and sweet
(13:23):
and couldn't do anything wrong.
dog.
Oh, naughty boy.
He's a naughty boy.
But he's so cute.
Okay.
You like how gently I, yes.
Boop.
His nose versus And hejust gets so offended.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's sensitive.
At approximately 4:58 PM rush hourswas at its peak, which is funny
(13:43):
because a lot has changed since 1967.
But, but not that, not rush hour.
The bridge was crowded with vehicles.
Witnesses would later report hearinga loud sound variously described as
a crack gunshot or a snapping noise.
Hmm.
Followed by an eerie groaningof metal under stress.
(14:08):
And I feel like we've all kind of heardthat from like, like movies, you know?
Yeah.
Like that.
Oh, totally, totally.
Right now, apocalyptic movies,you know, zombie movies, all these
people were trying to get home.
They had Christmaspresents and everything.
This is just telling me, waituntil Christmas Eve to shop.
Oh, Zachary, it's the easiest.
(14:30):
No, you stress me out.
There's less people out.
Okay.
Charleston Gazette reporter, Ruth Finleywas in her car in the westbound lane
heading from Point Pleasant toward Ohio.
When she noticed something strange,and this is a quote, the bridge
was just shaking, vibrating.
(14:51):
We were moving, but the bridge seemedto be moving in the opposite direction.
Hmm.
Well, I hate that.
What happened next wouldunfold with terrifying speed.
In less than a minute, the entirestructure of the Silver Bridge collapsed
into the icy Ohio River, dragging withit 31 vehicles and their occupants.
(15:14):
Charlene, what were you gonna say, baby?
I said eek.
Yeah, I mean that's like, that's bad.
Charlene Wood, who was drivingtoward Point Pleasant from the
Ohio side had a narrow escape.
She had just reached the WestVirginia side when she felt
the bridge give way behind her.
Her car made it to solid ground,but the vehicle behind her didn't.
(15:38):
That's as close as it can get.
It doesn't get, you'rethe last one to get there.
You're the last one toget over the bridge.
That's crazy.
And this is a quote from her.
I looked in my rear viewmirror and the bridge was gone.
Just gone, oh God.
From the banks of the river witnesseswatched in horror as the silver bridge,
(15:59):
a structure that had been part ofthe landscape for almost four decades
literally disappeared into the water.
The collapse happened so quickly that manyvictims had no time to react or escape.
And that's crazy.
Like it's it poof gone.
I complain when they start fixingbridges before they break, but also
(16:20):
like broken bridges are a problem.
So yeah, honey.
I was like, but was it reallygonna break or do we just
take safety too seriously now?
No, ES are really scary.
Okay, here we go.
The temperature that day wasaround 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
So, you know, just a nicebalmy, warm day in Ohio.
(16:44):
No, it, that's freezing.
Literally.
And the Ohio River was cold enoughto induce hypothermia within minutes.
It's, Darkness was already falling, makingrescue efforts even more challenging.
Local emergency services respondedquickly, but they were really overwhelmed
by the scale of this disaster.
(17:05):
Yeah, this is somethingyou can't really train for.
You call 9 1 1.
It's, and they're just like let usknow when you get to the hospital and
we'll try to take care of you on earth.
Howard Boggs a point pleasant resident wasamong those who rushed to the riverbank
to help and uh, he said it was chaos.
(17:26):
You could hear peoplescreaming from the water.
We tried to reach them, but the currentwas strong and it was getting dark fast.
Oh God.
I didn't even think aboutthe current rivers move.
Yes, but like it's already bad enough thatyou were in a car, the bridge collapsed.
You're now in the river.
Like that's all very bad andvery scary, and now you have
(17:49):
to deal with a current rescue.
Boats were launched.
And divers braved the frigidwaters in search of survivors.
But the combination of cold, thecurrent, and the darkness made
their task nearly impossible.
21 bodies were recoveredfrom the river that night.
(18:09):
More would be found inthe days that followed.
In total 46 people would lose their lives.
Wow.
More people found later onthan the day that it happened.
Yep.
Yeah.
Although two bodies were actuallynever recovered, so the victims
(18:30):
ranged in age from 18 to 74and and included entire family.
Two bodies.
Those of Maxine Turner andKathy Bias were never recovered.
Despite extensive search efforts.
The Silver Bridge collapsewas the worst bridge disaster
(18:50):
in US history at that time.
It left two communities devastated, andit raised serious questions about the
safety of America's aging infrastructureas news of the disaster spread.
The nation was shocked.
Okay, president Lyndon Johnson.
Lyndon b Johnson ordered animmediate investigation into
the cause of the collapse.
(19:12):
The National Transportation SafetyBoard, our friends at the NTSB, which had
been created only nine months earlier,would lead the effort to determine
what had gone so catastrophicallywrong, and the investigation would
be one of the most thorough andtechnically complex of its era.
(19:34):
Eventually uncovering a, that doomedthe bridge and those crossing it,
that fateful December evening.
Let's get nerdy.
All right.
The investigation into the SilverBridge collapse was a biggie.
Pieces of the bridge had to be recoveredfrom the river, a challenge complicated
(20:00):
by the Ohio River's, strong, current,and near freezing temperatures.
The wreckage was scattered over alarge area and many components had
been damaged by the collapse itself.
Making it hard to determinewhat was preexisting.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Kind of similar to aplane crash, honestly.
(20:21):
But there's no black box.
Oh, sucky little fox.
There is not a black box.
So we're going to have to listen to thebridge itself to hear what she has to say.
This was old school recovery work.
We are talking divers and freezing water,manually retrieving pieces of the bridge.
(20:43):
The NTSB enlisted help from multipleagencies, which help is good.
They got help from the NationalBureau of Standards, which nowadays
we know is the National Instituteof Standards and Technology.
I actually didn't.
Know that, but it's, that'sjust what it's called now.
Nist.
Yeah.
(21:03):
I'm not,
it's good old nist.
And the Bureau of Public Roads, theirgoal , was to determine not just
what had happened, but why and how toprevent similar disasters in the future.
Early in the investigation, the fallentowers provided a really crucial clue.
(21:26):
So both towers had fallen eastward towardthe West Virginia side of the river.
This indicated that a chain break hadoccurred somewhere west of the Ohio Tower.
Had the break occurred in the centerof the span, the towers would've
(21:47):
fallen in opposite direction.
Physics.
As investigators examined the recoveredwreckage, their attention focused on
the suspension chains, they noticedthat one particular link, Ibar 3 3 0,
(22:09):
showed signs of failure unlike the other.
Literally the broken link, the weak link.
Okay.
This eye bar was part, people died.
It's not funny.
I Okay it.
It, yes, people diedand that it is horrible.
It's terrible's.
Also, it's the weak link.
(22:30):
This ibar was part of the Ohio sidesuspension chain consistent with
what the fallen towers had suggested.
Detailed metallurgical analysis,which is an analysis of metal,
like surgical, but metallurgical.
How crazy is that?
That's a real Word.
(22:51):
I did not make that up.
I, I know.
All right.
Anyway, they did an analysisof I Bar three 30 and it
revealed something startling.
The I bar had failed due to a tinycrack, and I mean a tiny crack.
(23:14):
This thing was 0.1
inches.
0.1
inches, 2.5
millimeters deep, and it waslocated in one of the eyes
where it connected to a pin
that crack had formed at a stresspoint and had grown over time
through a process called stress,corrosion, cracking good old sk.
(23:41):
What sk
What's particularly significantis that this flaw would've been
virtually impossible to detectthrough visual inspection.
Okay?
It was located inside the jointhidden from view by the massive
pin that connected the eye ibar.
(24:03):
So the only way to have found itwould've been to disassemble the bridge.
That's not how that works.
No, that's insane.
And it also feels likea really bad design.
You know, that like there's a thingthat could have failed, but you can't
check to see how it's doing withoutcompletely taking apart the entire bridge.
(24:29):
Woof.
The investigation also found that thefailure of this single eye bar had
triggered a catastrophic chain reaction.
Chain reaction.
Mm-hmm.
Chain reaction.
Oh, there we go.
Good.
Okay.
Whoa.
I'm so funny.
When one side of Ibar three 30 failedall of the load transferred to the other
(24:54):
side, as in two people carrying a couch.
And one of them drops it.
Okay?
So that happened and thatimmediately made the other side
fail due to the crazy stress.
So now all of a sudden, thatside also dropped to the couch.
The joint was then held together byonly three eye bars from other links,
(25:18):
and another ibar slipped off the pincausing this chain to completely.
Separate.
Hmm.
Boom.
Once a suspension chain wassevered, collapse of the entire
structure was inevitable.
So all parts of the suspensionbridge exist in a state of perfect
(25:38):
equilibrium with each other.
And the second that that equilibriumis broken in any way, there was nothing
to stop this bridge from falling.
That's dumb.
Where's the redundancy drink?
Importantly, the investigation foundno evidence that the bridge was
(26:01):
overloaded at the time of the collapse.
So despite the Bridge's age inthe heavy traffic of that day,
the load that it was carrying wasstill within its design capacity.
In fact, the section wherethe failure occurred.
Was at less than half the maximumload that it was designed to
(26:24):
handle when the collapse began.
This was not a case of too manyvehicles or too much weight.
It was a hidden defect that had beengrowing silently for years possible
duck until it reached a critical point.
(26:44):
And in the final NTSB report, whichwas released in 1973 years after the
collapse that report concluded thatthe silver bridge failed due to a
cleavage fracture in the lower limbof the North eye bar of the Ohio side.
Suspension.
Chain cleavage should always cleavage,have a crack cleavage fracture.
(27:08):
Cleavage should always have a crack.
No, not on a bridge, baby.
Not on a bridge.
The fracture was caused by stress,corrosion, cracking, and corrosion
fatigue, which was exasperated.
That's a tough one to say.
Exasperated by the lack ofredundancy drink in the design.
(27:29):
The report noted that.
Had there been three or fourmore ibar per link which was
common for earlier Ibar bridges.
The failure of one ibar would probablynot have led to this disaster.
The choice to use only two ibar perlink while new and innovative and
(27:52):
economic at the time it killed people.
I mean, plain and simple peopledied because of that choice.
As National Geographics, Atlas of CursedPlaces highlighted the critical factor
was redundancy drink or lack thereof.
And they had this reallycool guy on the documentary.
(28:14):
His name was Matt Heon.
Heon, H-E-B-O-O-N.
He's a civil engineer and hedemonstrated the bridge failure
with a model, and he explained the.
This is a quote.
The original designs for this bridgecalled for a suspension cable, but they
decided to opt for a less redundantsystem with the ibar chains, which
(28:35):
allowed them to dramatically reducethe cost, but it also dramatically
reduced the redundancy in the system.
And I included that quote becauseit says redundancy, redundancy
twice, double drank in the bluntassessment of structural engineering.
Redundancy is safety.
I mean, that's it.
If you say redundancy one more time.
(28:57):
I swear to God
I love you so much.
We are gonna wrap up thisepisode here with a legend story.
Oh, let's talk about somethingspooky ooky, shall we?
Okay.
So.
This is actually what I thoughtwas most fascinating about this
(29:18):
case obviously it's terrifying.
It's part of history, bridge historyin particular, but there is a moth
man legend that is attached to this.
I think I've heard of that.
Oh, we gotta talk about it.
Okay.
In the 13 months leadingup to the bridge collapse.
(29:38):
Residents of point pleasant reportedsightings of a strange creature that
would come to be known as the north man.
The first reported sighting occurredon November 12th, 1966 when five
(29:58):
men working in a cemetery in WestVirginia claimed to see a man-like
figure flying low over the tree.
Geez.
Weird.
Cool.
Okay.
Very large Bat.
Superman.
Superman.
(30:19):
Large flying squirrel.
Three days later on November15th, two young couples, Roger
and Linda Scar, what a name.
And then Steve and Mary Ti.
Reported a similar encounter whiledriving near an abandoned World
War II TNT factory, outside Point,pleasant, and that's a cool date.
(30:44):
Just saying they described a large,great creature with glowing red
eyes and a wingspan of 10 feet thatfollowed their car as they sped away.
Keepers creepers.
That's a big ass bat.
10 foot wingspan.
Seven.
I'm gonna put you downlike a vulture maybe.
(31:05):
I don't know.
Okay.
In the following months, more than 100people claimed to have seen the moth man.
Reports typically describeda tall man-like figure with
wings and glowing red eyes.
Sightings continued untilthe Silver bridge collapsed.
(31:26):
After which they abruptly ceased.
It is weird that they suddenly stopped.
Mm.
Author and journalist, John Keelinvestigated these sightings and
he published his findings in the1975 book, the Moth Man Prophecies.
So that's fun.
(31:47):
Keel suggested a connectionbetween the Moth man sightings
and the bridge collapse, implyingthat the creature may have been
a sign of the impending disaster.
His book was later adapted into a2002 film starring Richard Greer.
Which further cemented the linkbetween the Moth Man and the
Silver Bridge in Popular Culture
(32:08):
Some pleasant point.
Residents believe that the Mothman was trying to warn them about
the Bridges imp pending failures.
Others see it as a more sinisterpresence he wanted to kill that
somehow caused the disaster.
Did he need souls Kullu?
Is that you?
Scientists and skepticsof course attribute the
(32:30):
sightings to, oh, here we go.
These are some other thingsthat people think it is.
Mis identifications of bar novels,herons, other large birds potentially
combined with heightened suggestibility.
And the psychological phenomenonknown as mass hysteria,
(32:53):
or it could be moth Man.
Point Pleasant has embraced theMoth man as part of its identity.
The town features a moth man museum.
A museum for a fake thing.
I, I wanna go so bad.
A 12 foot tall, stainless steel moth manstatue and an annual moth man festival.
(33:17):
In September and it drawsthousands of visitors.
Is that where they burn theship down ships down in the bay?
No, I don't think so.
Okay.
I don't know what that wouldhave to do with Moth, man.
I don't know what Moth man hasto do with a fucking bridge.
He made a bridge collapse.
Zach, have you not been listening?
(33:39):
This commercialization has led to whatsome researchers term narrative hijacking,
shifting the focus away from the actualtragedy to this really bizarre legend.
So, I mean, for the locals Moth Man andthe Silver Bridge are now kind of one in
the same like it is, it's science, it'smyth, it's a legend, it's all of that.
(34:02):
I.
And to think it was just a manthat built some wings so that
he could learn how to fly.
Oh God.
Oh no.
Oh no.
It's just the, it's just the local nut.
Yeah.
Just some guy couldn't afford, God dammit.
Bobby.
Bobby.
Okay.
(34:22):
Oh boy.
So, as you can probably imagine, um.
the collapse of the SilverBridge had immediate and also
far reaching consequences.
The most obvious was the severanceof West Virginia and Ohio.
Mm-hmm.
So there was once a bridge that was avital bridge connecting these two places.
(34:45):
The bridge doesn't exist anymore.
Now people can't get to work.
Yes.
I mean, residents who hadbecome accustomed to easy
access across the river.
Had to make a 40 mile detour e thatmakes getting to work a real bitch.
I just quit.
I quit and there's noworking remotely in 1967.
(35:07):
I don't even have to take 40steps to the shop and I quit.
Cute economic activity in bothareas was severely impacted.
Businesses that relied on cross rivertraffic struggled, and communities
that had grown together overthose four decades were separated.
The disaster also left psychologicalscars , many residents lost.
(35:29):
Friends, family members.
Some survivors experienced guiltfor having made it across just
before this disaster happened.
Also, there was some PTSDwith crossing bridges.
I mean, same.
That would be so scaryto witness that and then.
. Perhaps the most significant impactof the Silver Bridge collapse was
(35:51):
on national infrastructure policy.
This disaster exposed a criticalgap in how bridges were maintained
and inspected in the United States.
Prior to the Silver Bridge collapse,there was no national standard.
For bridge inspection, bridges wereinspected by their owners all willy-nilly
(36:13):
state local governments, and they all usedbasically criteria that they just made up.
Does it support my body weight?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Some bridges might go years withoutan inspection and there was no
systematic approach to identifyingany potential structural issues.
Before they became critical, theSilver Bridge disaster changed that.
(36:38):
So in 1968, just months after thecollapse, congress included a provision
in the Federal Aid Highway Act thatestablished the National Bridge
Inspection Standards, baaing baa Boom.
And just like how it sounds, thisis literally a program that is
mandated and standardizes inspectionsfor all bridges on public roads.
(37:01):
So that's great.
I mean, this is the first timewhere there's like actual consistent
criteria to see if a bridge is safe.
It, it seems like thatshould have happened before
1968, but that's, it's fine.
That's fine.
Countless lives weresaved because of this act.
(37:22):
So many bridges that had issueswere actually flagged and caught
during inspections, so that's great.
There were only two other bridges builtto a design similar to the Silver Bridge.
One was at St.
Mary's, West Virginia, which wasjust upstream of the Ohio River.
(37:43):
After the point pleasant disaster.
It was closed to traffic and itactually was demolished in 1971.
Hell yeah, brother.
The other bridge was significantly longerand it was actually located in Brazil.
And it remained in service until1991 when it was closed due
to high levels of corrosion.
This is Brazil.
(38:03):
Yeah, it is in Brazil.
Unlike the Silver Bridge, the Brazilianbridge had been built with a little
bit more redundancy, drank four ibarper link instead of just two, which
likely contributed to its longerlifespan after extensive renovation.
It actually reopened in December of 2019.
(38:23):
So let's talk about a replacement forthe Silver Bridge, a new structure.
The Silver Memorial Bridge was builtabout a mile and a half, downstream, 1.3
miles downstream to be exact.
Completed in 1969, it featured a cantylever design, rather than the ibar chain
(38:44):
suspension approach of its predecessor.
The new bridge continues to serveas a vital link between us, Virginia
and Ohio to this day, at the siteof the original bridge, a small
park now features a monument.
To the 46 victims of the disaster.
And each December 15th, thecommunity gathers there to
(39:05):
remember the lives that were lost.
, The Silver bridge, it left itsmark on engineering education.
It's now a case study taught tocivil engineering students worldwide
as a cautionary tale about design.
And redundant sir.
And the importance of that,especially for bridges.
(39:26):
All righty, Zach thatis our story for today.
Well, it seems like wetalk about a lot of death.
I'm not sure if we're obsessed with itor not, but I'm glad bridges have come
a long way because now we have someincredibly long bridges that get used.
(39:49):
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of bridges that are inservice today, we can thank the Silver
Bridge and the lessons learned for.
The current Bridge Safety Standards,I'm gonna call Bridge Builders and
ask them, did you think about theSilver Bridge when you did this?
And if they say, no, I quit.
(40:12):
Benjamin Benjamin put,sir, I don't wanna hear it.
No back talk.
If you enjoyed this episode,please rate, review, and subscribe
wherever you get your podcast.
We have a couple comments on some episodeson Spotify, and that's been really fun.
So keep leaving us comments.
We see them, we read them, we love them.
Thank you, mom.
(40:33):
And you can follow us.
You can follow us on Instagramat Final Boarding Call pod.
We are also on Facebook.
We have a Facebookdiscussion group as well.
We're on email, final boardingcall podcast@gmail.com.
And we also have a website,final boarding call podcast.com
Also, we've gotta give ashout out to our buddy Luke.
(40:54):
Who is a new listener.
And I promised him the nexttime that we recorded that,
I would give him a shout out.
So Luke, this one's for you.
It's a horrible story about abunch of people dying on a bridge.
I hope you liked it.
Listen to it right before bed.
Oh no, don't pull, Simon.
Join us next time when we'll diveinto another transportation disaster.
(41:18):
Until then, remember to stow your traytables, fasten your seat belts, and
prepare for the unexpected because notevery trip reaches its final destination.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
(41:38):
Zach, honey,
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