The structural members must have been bent when they were installed, they said. They worked the next day without incident. Then, at quitting time on August 29th, two compression members caved in and the rest of the bridge followed them. Blame for the Quebec bridge failure diffuses out among a lot of people, all of whom were distracted from the job itself. And we see parallels in many modern disasters.
Good technology has to be personal and self-expressive.
This first Quebec bridge was to have been the great masterpiece of cantilever construction, yet no one really poured his soul into it. It collapsed because it wasn't buoyed up by the human spirit. American Heritage of Invention and Technology , Spring 1986, pp.10-17.