Worcester History Facts

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1968 collapse of Worcester Expressway bridge at College Square retains power to shock
Worcester Telegram & Gazette

Byline: Craig S. Semon, Telegram & Gazette


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WORCESTER - Looking up at the sky, Fredrick J. Barletta Sr. began to scream, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

A few minutes later, Barletta, a coworker and an elderly Auburn man he never met were dead.

Although overshadowed by the Worcester tornado that struck June 9, 1953, and the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. fire of Dec. 3, 1999, that took the lives of six firefighters, the collapsing of the Worcester Expressway bridge over Southbridge Street on April 16, 1968, is one of the scariest days in the history of the city.

And it could have been deadlier.

Sunday marks the 55th anniversary of the day that 16 steel girders measuring 135 feet long, each weighing more than 15 tons, collapsed onto Southbridge Street, killing three people and injuring eight others. The bridge had not yet been opened to traffic.

To understand how the S-curve bridge collapsed over Southbridge Street, you must first understand the Worcester Expressway.

Expressway spares Fitton Field
On May 28, 1958, state Public Works Commissioner Anthony N. DiNatale said the College of the Holy Cross would lose a chunk of Fitton Field to make way for the Worcester Expressway.

Dedicated on May 20, 1905, the athletic field was in the path of the expressway going south from Brosnihan Square. Approval of this stretch would clear the way for completion of the entire southern leg from Worcester to the Massachusetts Turnpike. Still, college authorities said they would rather have the expressway go around the field rather than through it.

The route through Fitton Field was the only one under consideration up to April 18, 1961, when the DPW first announced it was considering the swing through the city’s industrial area, despite the DPW previously indicating that the route through Fitton Field was the cheaper of the two proposals.

Abruptly, the Federal Bureau of Public Roads made the decision to shunt the highway’s course into an industrial area.

The Worcester Area Chamber of Commerce and just about everyone who attended a hearing held on July 25, 1961, opposed it, while college officials strategically distanced themselves from the situation.

Final selection of a route was put on hold for 14 months.

“The suggested alternate route was not proposed by the college and no representative of the college has ever expressed any view favoring it,” said the Very Rev. Raymond J. Swords, S.J., Holy Cross president, said in a statement released on Oct. 8, 1962.

On Dec. 10, 1962, the state Department of Public Works disclosed that the Worcester Expressway route through Fitton Field was turned down because of “excessive land damage costs.”

Two days later, most of more than 100 persons who attended a meeting sponsored by the chamber opposed the new route and the 11th-hour switch by the DPW.

'Snaking' of road through area
City Manager Francis J. McGrath said avoidance of most homes and industrial property was accomplished by “snaking” the road through the area.

Project 1-290-5(19) was advertised on Aug. 27, 1966, and Contract No. 11823 was awarded to the Barletta Construction Co. Inc. of Roslindale on Oct. 5, 1966. The amount of the bid was $7.9 million, of which 90% was to be federal funds.

With the rewarding of the contract to the low bidder, Barletta Construction became the general contractor of Span 7 of the Worcester Expressway (later Interstate 290), a 1.7.-mile stretch running from Brosnihan Square to Hope Avenue. The bridge that collapsed on April 16, 1968, was included in this work.

April 16, 1968, started as a typical spring Tuesday.

The last of the 15-ton girders was being grappled by a crane and hoisted high about the Blackstone River, which runs beneath Southbridge Street following the angle of the bridge’s span.

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Around 10 a.m., the final girder had been successfully raised into place, making Span 7 of the Worcester Expressway bridge “temporarily” complete, the erecting crew believed.

Confident of its safety, traffic was allowed to pass beneath the beams around 11:30 a.m.

Traffic sparse on day of collapse
Most motorists, aware of the construction project at hand, had taken alternate routes for travel, so traffic was relatively light.

As motorists passed beneath the girders, they were unaware that the beams 25 feet above their heads were being held to the support girders by temporary bracings.

They were also unaware that the girders were beginning to buckle due to being severely overstressed under their own weight and about to crash below.

In Auburn, Carmen J. Festa was getting ready to take his wife, Georgianna, to St. Vincent Hospital for a routine medical appointment.

At 12:32 p.m., the elderly couple swung left onto Southbridge Street toward downtown and Span 7 of the expressway.

Driving 10 seconds in front of the Festas were Charles Gilman, a vending machine salesman from Framingham, and a work associate he just met that day, James H. Hickey of Worcester.

As the two cars headed down Southbridge Street, Richard A. Clark, a Worcester firefighter and a part-time truck driver for the Eastern Oil Co., was heading toward College Square from the opposite direction.

Clark, a 40-year-old father of four, was making a routine delivery of 2,000 gallons of gasoline to the Rochdale section of Leicester.

Clark and his cargo was nearing the lights at Southbridge and Cambridge streets. He passed the Festas beneath the overpass.

Gilman was about to clear the overpass. The Festas' car was directly beneath the girders. And the fuel truck was opposite the Festas.

Above, one of the 16 135-foot-long, 15-ton girders on the newly constructed bridge was starting to buckle, a slight immeasurable buckle that was not seen, heard or felt by the erecting crew that sat only yards away.

Suddenly, a thunderous rumble from the bridge directly spanning Southbridge Street shattered the tranquility of the day.

At 12:35 p.m., the first of the 16 girders came crashing down on Southbridge Street. The girder whipped across the rear window and trunk of Gilman’s car.

'The impossible was happening'
“Thank God I saw it coming. I looked up as we were passing underneath and I saw small girders begin to fall, then I heard a sound like a big rumbling noise,” Gilman told The Evening Gazette on April 17, 1968. “Then something told me what was happening. I was just all of a sudden was aware that that the impossible was happening and I slipped as low into my seat as I could.”

“Charlie (Gilman) had said to me, ‘So this is the new Worcester Expressway?’ And I said it was and I looked up and I saw four of the beams coming together like dominoes, then fall and then they hit the car,” Hickey said in the same article. “I saw them falling and I couldn’t believe it. It must have only taken seconds but it seemed like quite a while. I remember just looking at them, then realizing what was happening and putting my arms over my head and ducking into the seat.”

Robert G. Thompson Jr., a truck driver from South Barre, and two construction workers, Paul G. Loiseau of Shrewsbury and Robert F. Generelli of Worcester, ran to Gilman’s crushed car and helped the two men out.

“We crawled out of the car and I looked back just as the second downfall happened,” Gilman recalled. “And I said, ‘Oh my God, there were people under there’ and I knew how lucky we were to have gotten clear.”

Gilman and Hickey, who both escaped death by a matter of feet, suffered only minor injuries.

Almost instantaneous to the first girder falling from the sky, 11 more steel beams came raining down, pulverizing cars and trucks.

The Festas’ four-door sedan was directly beneath the falling girders and took the full brunt of the bombardment.

The steel girders, one after another, came crashing down, bouncing on and around the Festas’ car, which was reduced to a heap of crumpled metal and called “a pancake” by one spectator.

Inside, a lifeless Mr. Festa was pinned against the steering wheel, while his wife, sitting in the passenger seat, suffered chest injuries.

Gas truck explodes
A fallen girder wedged itself through the middle of the fuel tank of Clark’s gasoline truck. Seconds later, flames shot out, striking the Festas’ smashed sedan. There was no explosion, just a pop, as Clark scrambled down from the truck’s cab and ran to safety.

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“I had just passed under these big orange beams when I heard this awful loud rumbling noise. The noise was behind me and I couldn’t see anything because the truck – within seconds – was engulfed in flames,” Clark said in the April 17, 1968, edition of the Worcester Telegram. “My hair was on fire and the flames burned my face and eyelashes. Even the hair inside my ears is burned out.”

Before the collapse, Frederick J. Barletta Sr. of Westwood, president of Barletta Construction, the general contractor, and Leo C. Snyder Jr. of Somerville, a hoisting engineer for Barletta, were taking a lunch break with their crew.

Seeing the metal maelstrom unfolding overhead, Barletta, holding his head in disbelief and horror, began to scream, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” according to three witnesses.

Barletta, Snyder and several other men raced to the fallen beams and began to climb into the maze of steel toward the Festas’ pummeled sedan. They scrambled over, between and under the 12 girders to reach the car in an effort to remove the couple lest they be fatally burned if the gasoline truck exploded.

Construction superintendent Spencer Leek of Lexington forced open the right front door of the sedan, which was on the opposite side of the automobile from flames rising 12 feet above the pavement at the truck, while Barletta and Snyder pulled Mrs. Festa out of the sedan.

Loiseau, Generelli, Thompson and construction worker Frank J. Hayes of North Grafton carried the injured woman to safety, returning to the automobile within seconds.

Barletta leaned into the sedan but was unable to budge Festa, who was already dead. Loiseau than climbed partially into the front seat. Leek opened the rear door and Hayes got into the rear compartment.

Hayes reached over the front seat and aided Loiseau in trying to free Festa. The other men attempted to give assistance.

At a shout of a warning that the remaining four beams were falling, the rescue attempt was halted and the seven men attempted to scatter to safety. They didn’t all make it.

Rescuers killed
Barletta was struck by a falling beam and died instantly.

Several hours after being touched by 15 tons of steel, Snyder also died of his injuries.

One girder grazed Hayes and fractured his ankle. He was hospitalized for his injuries, which resulted in partial disablement of one foot.

Generelli was hospitalized, suffering partial disablement as the result of injuries to his back.

“I heard a noise and everything went to blank,” Generelli told The Evening Gazette on April 17, 1968. “Then I came to and I saw all this steel all around me and I lost my sense of direction and started running…You should have seen them falling – bing, bing, bing, one after another.”

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Leek recovered after being hospitalized.

Loiseau was hospitalized for fractured vertebrae, which resulted in a partial disability.

Thompson’s injuries were minor.

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission honored Barletta, Snyder, Hayes, Generelli, Leek, Loiseau and Thompson for their heroism.

Five minutes after it started, the collapse was over. Three dead. Eight injured. And a lot of unanswered questions.

Gazette springs to action
The Evening Gazette printed 50,000 final editions with a story of the bridge disaster on the day it happened.

First word of the bridge collapse came to the Gazette city desk from photographer George Cocaine, who picked up the information over the police scanner in the darkroom. Immediately, five reporters and two photographers including Cocaine raced to Southbridge Street.

Managing Editor Kenneth J. Botty told the pressroom that a replate was in the works, while The Associated Press was alerted and promised full coverage as soon as details came in.

Botty abandoned his office for a post at the city desk and wrote the story from information fed to him by regional editor Russ Donnelly.

A battery of reporters started taking information over the phones from fellow reporters on the scene while others searched the library files for background on the bridge.

The story went over to the copy desk in short takes and the third-floor composing room turned the words into print almost as swiftly as they received the story.

Freelance photographer Paul Fennessy was on the scene and delivered two rolls of film, with one of his shots capturing the tragedy in excellent detail.

At 2:32 p.m., the pressed rolled with a new from-page story with a 72-point bold headline, “Expressway Bridge Collapse,” and Fennessy’s six-column picture of the disaster.

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The editorial staff of Gazette celebrated its work after press time at the Eden Gardens next door, while the morning Worcester Telegram editors and reporters started their shift with hopes of achieving similar results that their friendly rivals under the same roof at 20 Franklin St. delivered.

Both papers did. But the story wasn’t over. Far from it.

Investigations launched
In the aftermath of the collapse, three major probes followed - one by the state Department of Public Works, another by the insurance companies representing the contractors, and an independent investigation commissioned by the state DPW.

Released in November 1968, all three reports concluded the bridge fell from an overloaded stress in the compression (upper) flange of the girders.

“It is the opinion of the board of inquiry that the direct cause of the collapse (of the bridge) was the lack of sufficient diagonal braces between each set of girders and the fact that bolts or drift pins were not placed in at least 50 percent of the holes in the connections at the fixed end of the span as required by specification,” the state DPW's 1,000-page report concluded.

The state DPW concluded that just before the collapse the steel girders were “in a very unstable condition” and “even the slightest wind could have precipitated the failure.”

The problem arose because of the length of the girders making up the span. No two girders were the same length because of the angle at which the bridge must cross Southbridge Street. Because of this, the girders were flexible, which presented placement problems. As a result, each girder must be braced immediately to prevent the possibility of collapse and each girder was to have been cross-braced to its neighbors at four immediate stages, according to the state DPW report.

According to Hub Testing Co. daily reports, only the horizontal portions of the cross-bracing were in place and then in only two center stages.

Robert S. Foster, associate commissioner of the DPW, said the most westerly beam was the first to fall and that others fell in rapid succession.

Most beams poorly supported
The first six beams on the Holy Cross side of the bridge were adequately supported, while most of the other 10 were not, Foster said.

The girders falling “like dominoes” was attributed in all reports to the fact that the girders were partially bolted with six bolts at the top end and linked together with horizontal diaphragms, but not the stiffening cross-braces, which created movements and stresses in other beams.

Also, all holes in the girders did not line up with the fixtures they were to connect with, preventing complete bolting at the fixed of the span, Foster said.

As far as allowing motor vehicles to drive underneath the bridge before completion, “department policy is and has been to allow traffic to flow beneath uncompleted structures, on the assumption that prudent erectors, in their concern for safety, have complied with all necessary requirements,” the report said.

Temporary cross-bracing was put in place “to prevent tumble.” Foster said that if the cross-bracing had been installed “immediately” after the beam was raised, the bridge would probably have stood.

In an independent 144-page report commission by the DPW, Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor Carl H. Koontz, head of WPI’s civil engineering department, concluded that the strength properties of the girders at the stage of erection before collapse was “such that they were severely overstressed under their own weight.”

Koontz said the incomplete cross-bracing on the bridge had a detrimental effect on the span as a whole.

“The buckling of one (girder) would induce the buckling of the others,” Koontz said. “Even though the previous erected spans were successfully erected, the factor of safety was substantially less than that which would be considered satisfactory.”

Edwards & Kelcey, an engineering firm representing insurers of the Volmer Associates, designers of the bridge, suggested a possible precipitation factor behind the collapse: “Recorded winds of 10 to 13 miles an hour, with aggravating local gusts and turbulences are the most probable source of the disturbing forces which loosened the tenuous temporary connections and finally triggered the collapse.”

All three reports agree that the girders fell because of abnormal amount of stress exerted upon them due to the fact that they were held with temporary bracing.

As the first girder began to buckle, says Koontzs’ report, “the buckling of one would induce the buckling of the others.”

3 acquitted of manslaughter in collapse
On June 1, 1972, a Superior Court jury in Marlborough acquitted three defendants facing manslaughter charges in connection with the 1968 collapse of the Worcester Expressway bridge at College Square.

Found not guilty after nine weeks of trial were Owen J. McGarrahan Co. of Cambridge, subcontractor for steel erection on the project; Adelbert V. Prosser of Hopkinton, a foreman on the job for McGarrahan; and Walter Viglione of Stoneham, Prosser’s immediate superior.

At the trial, John R. Horan of Worcester, resident engineer on the Worcester Expressway project for the state Department of Public Works, blamed insufficient lateral support as the major cause of the collapse and inadequate bolting as a contributing factor.

On May 19, 1972, Superior Court Judge Robert H. Beaudreau directed a verdict of not guilty for Horan, who was also facing the charge of manslaughter.

In the first of a two-part series titled “Expressway Design Keeps Visiting Drivers Guessing,” published Jan. 8, 1973 in The Evening Gazette, reporter Everett M. Skehan describes the initial feeling of an unfamiliar motorist might get passing Fitton Field while driving on Route I-290: “The road curves sharply first in one direction and then the opposite way. leaving you with the impression that you’re on some kind of sports car racetrack rather than a major state highway.”

For the series, Skehan took a ride along the highway with two associate professors of civil engineering from WPI. As the combination think tank/carpool approached Fitton Field, the two civil engineers complained how the road began to curve sharply and then, in a very short distance, curved back in the other direction.

“You don’t usually see a reverse curve in a major highway,” said associate professor Richard W. Lamothe. “The design is deficient, something you wouldn’t expect. Still, it would probably meet design standards.”

When the car hit the first curve, it tilted as the road banked to give stability to the fast-moving traffic. Then when it quickly came upon the next curve, the car tilted in the opposite direction almost like a rocking boat, Skehan wrote.

“There’s a lot more to many of these things than meets the eye,” associate professor Richard D. Desrosier said. “The Holy Cross curve isn’t there because the design engineer wanted it that way. I’m sure he had to do it to satisfy someone.

I know I was not on campus and recall this tragedy happened when the school was closed.

"Worcester is known for its seven hills: Pakachoag, Sagatabscot, Hancock, Chandler, Green, Bancroft and Newton."

Would have gotten Pakachoag and been dead wrong guessing 3 more, to wit: Belmont Hill, Grafton Hill and Vernon Hill. I guess they're just neighborhoods, but not really hills.

I took a trip to ND my senior year of hs- remember thinking when we saw a small bit of South Bend itself that the only place I'd been that it resembled was Worcester.