Video: Sizable piece of Pier 58 on Seattle waterfront collapses

A video released Tuesday by Seattle's Office of the Waterfront, shows a chunk of Pier 58 completely detach from the rest of the structure and sink to Elliott Bay.

The collapse, which occurred Sunday afternoon as crews worked on removing the pier, brought parts of the pier's sidewalk, a 4-ton fountain and concrete planters into the water. Five crew members missed being pulled into the bay, but two who did fall in were rescued and transported to Harborview Medical Center. All were wearing flotation devices, city officials said in a remote Tuesday news conference.

The video was taken from a security camera from the Seattle Aquarium.

Removal started this past weekend, about a month after the city discovered the pier had been shifting away from land considerably. It was shut down, and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan expedited the approval to remove it ahead of its 2022 deconstruction date.

When the section collapsed, crew members were saw-cutting a concrete planter to shed weight from the pier. The north end of Pier 58, where the chunk collapsed, was supported by steel-encased concrete piles which began to fail. The crew were trying to get rid of weight before they gave way, said Marshall Foster, the director of the city's waterfront office.

But the collapse could have been worse.

"I cannot overemphasize how extraordinarily fortunate we are there was no additional injury, with elements as big and heavy as they were," Foster said.

The chunk containing the fountain and tree planters fell almost completely vertically, Foster said, and didn't bring down any of the timber piles or the boardwalk of Pier 58.

"We were very lucky the workers that went into the water were to the south near those trees and that is the portion that fell straight down," said Jessica Murphy, the office's construction manager said.

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration have both opened investigations into the collapse, looking at the contractors — Orion Marine Contractors and Evergreen Concrete Cutting — and the city. Foster said with something as major as this, state and federal investigations weren't out of the ordinary.

Foster said the city plans to keep one of the contractors, Orion Marine Contractors out of Tacoma on the job after the investigation.

The pier was scheduled for renovation in 2022, as part of a reimagining of the Waterfront Park. The city hoped to use the fountain, and Foster said it still plans to — once it's fished out of Elliott Bay with the rest of the debris.

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