POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — While most people by mid-December are in full Christmas preparation mode, you’ll always find a tinge of sadness during those days around Point Pleasant, West Virginia. December 15th for this community means a lot more than ten days until Christmas.
It was on Dec. 15, 1967 when the Silver Bridge collapsed into the waters of the Ohio River and claimed 46 lives. The collapse couldn’t have come at a worse time. The bridge was filled with traffic at 4:58 p.m. Most of the motorists were headed home from work or from Christmas shopping. Witnesses tell stories of spotting wrapped Christmas presents floating in the water as cars plunged into the icy waters of the Ohio River.
Word quickly spread through the small town and for many families, their lives, and Christmas, changed forever.
The culprit was the design of the bridge and time. The bridge was an Eye-Bar design. A small crack had formed in one of the joints. The small fracture finally reached its breaking point and caused a catastrophic failure. The broken joint started a domino effect to the bridge’s entire suspension and it came crashing down without warning. The tragedy led to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968, which established a National Bridge Inspection Program which created bridge inspection standards still in use today.
“The unexpected tragic collapse of the Silver Bridge on December 15, 1967, was an alarming wake-up call for bridge owners across the nation that our infrastructure was getting older and bridge conditions needed to be assessed on a routine schedule and in a systematic way, and a large group of folks needed to be trained and educated as to what to look for and how it pertained to public safety,” said Tracy Brown, P.E., State Bridge Engineer for the West Virginia Department of Transportation.
A modern style bridge downriver from Point Pleasant replaced the doomed span and is still called the Silver Bridge. But the old bridge’s abutment still stands along the flood wall in Point Pleasant as a forever monument to those who perished in the mishap. They are remembered every year during a memorial service on the anniversary and a bell is rung 46 times in their memory.
“Each year, when December 15 comes up, I always think about how close it is to the Christmas holidays,” Brown said. “There would never be a good time for something like this to happen, but Christmas to me is supposed to be about family and spending time with the ones you love and care about. Many families back in 1967 unfortunately didn’t get that opportunity.”
“This tragedy should never be forgotten, and we should use it as a reason to reach forward and try harder in everything we do so that no one will ever have to experience anything like it again,” Brown said. “There are no shortcuts in this business. No matter what, you do whatever it takes to ensure the public’s safety.”