News

Miami, FL – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined state and local officials, and local law enforcement at a press conference following today’s tragic pedestrian bridge collapse at Florida International University (FIU). Earlier today, Rubio called on the Department of Transportation (DOT) to address the “bridge’s design, construction, and ultimate failure” while it conducts its investigation.
  
A rough transcript of Rubio’s English and Spanish remarks is below.
 
RUBIO:  For everybody standing here, this is, again, another troubling and tragic incident. For me personally, FIU is home. I’ve been an adjunct professor here for ten years. There’s a lot of pride and excitement that exists about this project. Ironically, it’s a project designed for safety. We lost some students last year crossing that road behind us. And it’s also been a signature project. One that people would identify with the school and with this community. And one of a kind in terms of its engineering design. I believe it was just Saturday where it was unveiled with a tremendous amount of excitement and pride. And it was one of those things people would always see and remember this school about. So to see it on the ground there today. And underneath, those who lost their lives as a result of this, and those who have been injured. It’s just so tragic. We recognize that even as we speak to you now, there are families whose hearts are being broken by the news or the thought that a loved one’s perished in something like this.
 
I can tell you at the federal level, I had an opportunity to speak to the Secretary of Transportation before being on the plane that the federal agencies are already here – both OSHA and National Transportation Safety Board will be conducting an exhaustive review. And the one thing that we do owe the people of the country and the people of this community, because part of this project is federal funding, it’s called a TIGER grant that was passed through for this project that everyone took great pride in. We deserve to know, and the public deserves to know, and the families of those who have been hurt and who lost their lives deserve to know what went wrong. That’s one thing everybody should be rest assured of. These people that are going to be doing these engineering studies will tell us what went wrong. That won’t provide any comfort to the families who lost a loved one, but it will prevent something like this from ever happening again—we learn from these things. There will be an exhaustive review that will give details on an engineering and scientific level as to what the errors were and what led to this catastrophic collapse. Of that you can rest assured. That work has already begun.
 
I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, and I know this has deeply affected the president of this institution. Mark Rosenberg happened to be in Washington when this happened. We were on the same plane coming down. We rode over from the airport. I know this has been difficult on him and everybody here at FIU, and the first responders. They’re one of a kind. With their gear on trying to get in there to the last second trying to figure out if there’s any people they can save. And risking their own safety in the process. We thank them for the work they’re doing, and the work they will be doing in the days and hours to come. Thank you.
 
En Español
FIU es un Tesoro. Todos tenemos seres queridos familiares o nosotros mismos quienes hemos estado en esta institución. Sabemos que este puente iba a ser un símbolo de esperanza, era un proyecto bien especial. Este sábado pasado lo inauguraron y desafortunadamente hoy es una tragedia terrible. Yo sé que esto ha impactado mucho al Presidente y a esta institución. Incluso, aquí mismo de este edificio salieron estudiantes quienes están estudiando medicina y cruzaron la calle para tratar de atender a las víctimas de este terrible accidente.
 
Les puedo decir que, desde el gobierno federal hubo dineros federales que fueron parte de este proyecto se está conduciendo una investigación completa. Una investigación parecida a la que se hace después de un accidente de un avión y vamos a saber esos resultados. El público va a saber qué fue lo que ocurrió aquí y por qué ocurrió. También sabrá cuál fue la causa de este accidente. Les pido que recen hoy por esas familias quienes han sido impactadas por esto, por los que están en el hospital, y por los que todavía posiblemente no han recibido la terrible noticia de que alguien en su familia ha fallecido en este accidente.