Victims fighting in court for answers about Fern Hollow Bridge collapse cause

PITTSBURGH — It’s an image that’s hard to forget. A major bridge collapsed during the morning rush hour sending nine people to the bottom of the ravine. Now nearly two years later, there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

“There is some frustration because they want this to conclude and know what happened just as much as we do,” said Pete Giglione.

Giglione represents Daryl Luciani, the bus driver who fell from the bridge in 2022. He along with the other eight people are suing the city in civil court.

“We are simply trying to learn exactly what happened so we can get the necessary information and materials to our experts to try to determine why this bridge collapsed and who is potentially responsible,” Giglione said.

But those cases hitting major roadblocks as the city claims this information is protected under law. In a hearing on Tuesday, different witnesses from the city and PennDOT fought back on releasing redacted information from inspection reports. Plus the city admitting that it knew of these drainage issues yet did nothing about it.

It’s those issues that Giglione believes may have contributed to the deterioration of the bridge.

“Not just unredacted reports but other information we’ve requested from subpoena from third parties that information is critical in us making these findings,” Giglione said.

The city points to the active NTSB investigation for withholding the information. This afternoon a spokesperson with NTSB told Channel 11 it’s in the final process of that investigation and hopes to have the final findings in early 2024, but in these cases that may be too late.

“In civil cases, we have a statute of limitations, in this case for all parties it’s two years and we are coming up on that two years in January and if the NTSB doesn’t issue that report in advance of that two years, we won’t know who else is possibly responsible for this and if we get outside that two-year window our clients could certainly be denied justice,” Giglione said.

At this point, the case is in the hands of the judge to make a decision; it’s not clear when that will happen.

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