U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to reporters and first responders as he visits the site of a bridge collapse prior to attending an earlier scheduled event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., January 28, 2022.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
President Joe Biden made an unscheduled visit to the site of a bridge collapse in Pittsburgh on Friday afternoon, during a trip in which Biden planned to promote his legislative agenda — including the landmark infrastructure law he signed last year.
Pittsburgh Public Safety confirmed the collapse on Twitter before 7 a.m. ET, urging people to avoid the area around Forbes and Braddock avenues near Frick Park.
Three people have been hospitalized with nonlife-threatening injuries, while authorities have been deployed to “ensure there are no victims under the collapsed bridge,” the city tweeted in an update later Friday morning. Ten people have been checked or treated for minor injuries, including first responders, the city said in a press release.
The site of the collapse is just a few miles from Carnegie Mellon University at Mill 19, where Biden was set to deliver remarks around 2 p.m.
Biden spoke by phone Friday morning with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Sen. Bob Casey and Pittsburgh mayor Ed Gainey, according to Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who briefed reporters aboard Air Force One.
“The President is grateful to the first responders who rushed to assist the drivers who were on the bridge at the time,” the White House said in a statement Friday morning.
Biden’s speech is expected to focus on his administration’s progress in strengthening U.S. supply chains and boosting manufacturing levels.
A key tool in those efforts is the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law, a top legislative achievement of Biden’s first year in office.
The package, which passed after years of failed efforts by former President Donald Trump and other presidents to forge a similar agreement, allocates $550 billion in new money for transportation, broadband and utilities projects.
Emergency vehicles are parked at the edge of a bridge that collapsed, Friday Jan. 28, 2022 in Pittsburgh’s East End.
Gene J. Puskar | AP
A significant slice of that money could be spent in Pennsylvania, a former Rust Belt state that has worked hard to reorient its workforce and its economy to meet the needs of the post-industrial era.
The city of Pittsburgh is at the heart of this statewide transformation, and over the past decade it has drawn a series of tech giants and biomedical companies to open hubs there.
But the state’s infrastructure has not kept up with its ambitions. Pennsylvania’s infrastructure was ranked the seventh-worst in the nation in 2021, according to U.S. News & World Report.
