Galloping Gertie was the nick name given to the firs attempt to building a bridge to carry Washington’s State Route 16 across the Tacoma Narrows in Washington State. It was open to traffic on the 1st of July 1940 and quickly earned its descriptive moniker for the way it moved in the wind. As it so often the case, the problem was one of funding.
Plans for the bridge had kicked off in and early in 1937 when the Washington State Toll Bridge Authority came in to being and took control of $5,000 for a visibility study and to building a suspension bridge. But when the authority applied to the Public Works Administration for $11 million to build a design by local engineer Clark Eldridge, a New York company said they could do it for less.
The new design featured two and a half meter guard that support beneath the roadway instead of the original seven and a half meter ones. This decision was to prove disasters and at 11am, on the 7th of November, just four months after opening, event show just how disastrous.
A physical phenomenon known as Mechanical Resonance made the bridge swing violently from side to side before the concrete cracked and the bridge’s central span plunged in to the narrows below.
Amazingly thee re was no human lost of life in the incident, although there was one death; a Cocker Spaniel called “Tubby” who got trapped in the car when his owner’s father, local news photographer Leonard Coatsworth was forced to flee fro his life.
Coatsworth later received compensation of $364.40 for his car contents including poor old Tubby.
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