MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — Eight years ago Sunday, at 1:47 p.m., a pedestrian bridge being built to link Sweetwater to Florida International University’s main campus came crashing down.

The horrific accident that claimed six lives would leave a painful scar on the families of the victims and the community as a whole.

Without warning, the pedestrian bridge, designed to connect Sweetwater to the Modesto A. Maidique Campus, came crashing down while under construction.

Six people died, including one man working on the project and five people who were in their cars, stopped at a traffic light under the bridge when it fell.

“I don’t know if this will ever go away, so every year that we can, we will come over here and remember her and the other victims of the tragedy,” Orlando Duran, whose daughter, Alexa, died in the collapse, said at a 2023 ceremony honoring the victims.

Alexa Duran, Alberto Arias, Oswaldo Gonzalez, Rolando Fraga and Brandon Brownfield all died in their cars.

The construction worker killed in the accident was identified as Navaro Brown.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined design flaws led to the bridge falling down.

Engineers underestimated the load of the bridge and underestimated its strength.

Most noticeably, engineers on the project decided cracks on the bridge -- reported five days before the collapse -- were not an immediate safety issue, so they allowed traffic to flow under the bridge.

“All they had to do was stop traffic and this would not have ever happened,” Orlando Duran said.

Construction of a new bridge is underway and is expected to be done sometime this fall.

The work happens predominately at night, with traffic under the structure not allowed.

The families of those who died filed lawsuits. They agreed on a settlement of $103 million, paid out by 26 different companies involved in the project.

The general contractor went into bankruptcy.

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