harlene Wood was driving home at 5 p.m. on December 15, 1967, when she felt Silver Bridge shake. The bridge, built in 1928, spanned the Ohio River between Ohio and West Virginia, and served 4,000 vehicles every day. On this cold Friday, a single eyebar — a 55-foot-long section of steel, two inches thick and 12 inches wide — had suddenly fractured. Then the pin holding it in place fell loose, sending the bridge’s components into catastrophic failure. “It was like someone had lined up dominoes,” Wood recalled. “I could see car lights flashing as they were tumbling into the water. The car in front of me went in. Then there was silence.”

Silver Bridge inherited its name from its metallic aluminum paint, but it was notable as well for its distinct design. The American Bridge Company, which won the bid for the project, settled on the cheaper method of using eyebars instead of cables of steel wire, the sort used in famous suspension bridges like the Brooklyn and Golden Gate.