The footage, which was recorded by a mobile device inside Florida's Sunguide traffic center, shows the bridge suddenly falling on top of cars that were stopped at the light and others who had the right of way.
According to the Miami Herald, the footage was picked up by the county's traffic-monitoring camera at the intersection of 8th Street and 109th Avenue, but the system was not set up to store footage.
"We have no recording of the bridge collapse," Karla Damian, spokesperson for Miami-Dade's Transportation and Public Works Department, told the outlet. "The video posted on social media appears to have been an individual recording of the system playback from the Sunguide Center's monitors."
The homicide division of the Miami-Dade Police Department has taken the lead on the incident and will look into whether criminal negligence charges are in order, Department Director Juan Perez announced on Friday.
"We've got to look at the reality that there may be some negligence down the line," Perez said during an interview on WIOD 610 AM. "It will help determine whether someone is liable for this… it's obviously an accident either way."
"We have to look to see if somebody contributed to that accident," Perez added.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials (OSHA) have also launched an investigation to see whether or not poor planning and construction played a role in the sudden collapse.
With increased concern over what caused the collapse, it has since been revealed that the two companies behind the "instant bridge" have been accused of unsafe practices in the past. Nearly two weeks ago, Munilla Construction Management (MCM), a federal military contractor for the US military and Navy, was sued by a TSA employee in South Florida after a makeshift bridge built by the company at the Fort Lauderdale airport collapsed, CBS News reported.
In the lawsuit, MCM was accused of hiring "incompetent, inexperienced, unskilled or careless employees," Fox News noted. The company has also been hit with fines totaling more than $50,000 by OSHA within the last five years for safety violations.
As for Figg Bridge Design, the second company involved in the Florida project, a portion of a bridge it was assembling in Virginia in 2012 fell apart during construction and injured four workers, the Virginian Pilot reported. It was later fined $28,000 for safety violations.
In response to the 950-ton bridge collapsing on Thursday, both companies have offered to fully cooperate with investigators. It should be noted that in Figg's statement it indicated that in its "40-year history, nothing like this has ever happened before," which is not exactly accurate.
Officials at the scene have reported that the bridge was undergoing a type of stress test when it collapsed.
