Florida Pedestrian Bridge Collapses Over Miami Highway, Fatalities Reported

Miami: A newly installed pedestrian bridge over a six-lane highway in Miami (Florida) on a college campus collapsed Thursday, crushing a number of cars below and reportedly leaving several people dead. The Miami Herald reported that an unknown number of people were trapped underneath the collapsed walkway, which connected Florida International University to a student housing area. The bridge was still undergoing construction and it was a project to aid pedestrians, connecting the campus of Florida International University (FIU) with the city of Sweetwater west of Miami.

Miami first responders and rescue officials said that there are four confirmed fatalities and the search and rescue phase is not complete. A student posted the picture on Twitter and it has gone viral since, here's the tweet:

Florida state Senator Marco Rubio also expressed his condolences. "Ironically this [bridge] was designed for safety ... it was going to be a signature project and one of its kind in terms of its engineering design," he said. "The public deserves to know and the families deserve to know and the people who lost their lives deserve to know what went wrong. These people doing the engineering studies will tell us what went wrong. It will prevent something like this from happening again because we learn from those things."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said President Trump was aware of the situation. He had tweeted out his condolence to the family of victims.

In a news conference earlier Thursday, officials said there were eight vehicles trapped under rubble at the scene, and several people were transported to various hospitals. Aerial footage showed the vehicles stuck underneath the 174-foot, 950-ton bridge.