“I read where the original design had the walkway supported with cables from a tower - none of which is seen at the collapsed walkway.
Sooo, maybe they forgot the supports?”
That’s my take. They removed the center shoring without any of the tower superstructure in place. Some folks have said the tower had been erected but the supporting cables had not been installed. I did not see the tower in the pix (and now someone will post a pix where the the tower is plain as day, duhhh) but the point is, the suspension aspect of the bridge was simply not there. The suspending cables were definitely not there. So that makes the tower kind of...useless.
There’s nothing wrong with the basic design, there are many many of those bridges in use all over the world, it’s more or less just a single tower (instead of conventional arch-tower) suspension bridge. (I oversimplify of course)
But to think the bridge could support itself w/o the suspension AND without the center support is like 3rd grade stupid.
Sooo, maybe they forgot the supports?
Sort of, ...the bridge was built parallel to, and alongside the highway, then rotated on wheeled supports across the highway and settled on it's end piers.
Then they removed the wheeled supports to clear the highway, and over a few days, proceeded to finally tension and prepare the bridge for use.
The supports should not have been removed until the finally tensioned structure had lifted it's self off the supports.
There were no cables, you could see where they would be bolted onto the upper structure. There was no tower that would sit upon a nonexistent center foundation to carry the cables, if there were it collapsed before the cables were installed.
The official story that they were tightening the cables is a lie. As far as I can see there were no cables installed. Look closely at the early pictures of the collapse, you can see every bolt that cables were to be bolted to, and no broken parts or nuts on them.
They should have keep support underneath this bridge until it was finished. Someone made the decision to rush the job, and they should be prosecuted for murder.