MIAMI – Authorities said two cars have been removed from under the rubble of a collapsed pedestrian walkway at Florida International University in Miami.

The 174-foot, 950-ton span fell Thursday afternoon at the university's main Miami-area campus. Video shows vehicles underneath the bridge were hit. At least six people were killed and authorities are still slowly removing the debris, looking for more victims.

 

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Arthur Holmes Jr. said crews won't leave until all the vehicles that were trapped under the bridge are retrieved. Police said the first two vehicles were removed Saturday.

The bridge collapsed Thursday, killing at least six people.

Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez says DNA may be needed to confirm some victims' identities, along with fingerprints and family photographs. He said the process of recovering the remaining cars was arduous.

“Right now we're just chipping away,” he said at a news conference Saturday.

Florida officials say two days before the catastrophic bridge collapse, an engineer left a voicemail saying some cracking had been found at one end of the span.

However, the voicemail to the Florida Department of Transportation wasn't picked up until after the collapse. The engineer said in the call he didn't believe the cracking posed a safety issue.

Federal transportation safety officials said Friday night that don't know if any cracking was related to the collapse.

Bridge
FIU tweeted about the "first-of-its-kind" bridge on its Twitter page Saturday, March 10, 2018.

The pedestrian bridge was called a "first of its kind" by FIU in a story published Saturday, March 10 on its website. According to a fact sheet about the bridge on FIU's website, it was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane and was supposed to last more than 100 years, CNN reported. It cost $14.2 million to build. It funded as part of a $19.4 million grant from the Department of Transportation, the fact sheet said.

"FIU is about building bridges and student safety. This project accomplishes our mission beautifully," FIU President Mark B. Rosenberg said in the FIU story. "We are filled with pride and satisfaction at seeing this engineering feat come to life and connect our campus to the surrounding community where thousands of our students live."

FIU touted the bridge as the first to be constructed entirely of self-cleaning concrete which, when exposed to sunlight, "the titanium dioxide in the concrete captures pollutants and turns it bright white, reducing maintenance costs," it said in the story.

 

Many people have started to share their condolences on social media. Sen. Bill Nelson offered to help in any way he can and said he was going to call Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to ask the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate what went wrong.

Construction on the bridge, designed by FIGG Bridge Engineers and built by MCM, began last spring and was expected to be completed in early 2019.  

The NTSB confirmed it is sending a team to investigate the bridge collapse.

Information from the Associated Press and CNN contributed to this story.