Alex Delp was seven days into his engineering career with Allegheny Crane and Rigging last week when he found himself hovering 250 feet in the air overlooking the rubble of Pittsburgh’s Fern Hollow Bridge.

“It started out like any normal Friday,” said Delp, 23, of Lower Burrell.

The day quickly changed, however, after the bridge, which carries Forbes Avenue across a deep ravine in Frick Park, collapsed with several vehicles — including a 60-foot Port Authority bus — on the deck. Authorities reported that 10 people were injured.

Allegheny Crane, a Robinson-based company, was quickly called to the scene, joining throngs of first responders, as they assessed how to remove the bus from the ravine.

Delp, who graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in December, was one of 45 employees whisked to the site.

For most of the weekend, crews conducted exploratory work to ensure nobody was trapped under the rubble. Officials also removed 125 gallons of fuel from the bus to avoid any leaks.

Delp, one of three engineers on site, jumped in and assisted wherever possible. After being lifted above the scene from a “man basket” on a second crane, he began calculating distances from the slope to the edge of the bridge abutment and to the broken bridge so the bus could be lifted without incident.

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The engineering process took between 16 and 18 hours. It included data from various sources, including the National Transportation Safety Board, which was called in to investigate the incident.

“We had multiple sources of information coming in, and it was very critical for me to use as many sources as possible and utilize the teammates that I had because this lift was just that close,” Delp said. “We knew we could get it, but we wanted to have it set up 100% correct.”

By Monday, other team members began securing several cables to the 21-ton bus.

Once it was secure, towing equipment started to pull the bus up the slope for several minutes, then the crane started to lift it high into the air.

The bus cleared the treeline dozens of feet in the air, was then rotated, and then slowly moved over to Forbes Avenue and set down on its wheels. It was able to be backed down the street from the scene.

“We wanted it to hang low just on the backside so it’d come off the bridge,” said Kyrk Pyros, owner of Allegheny Crane and Rigging. “We left it basically at 47, 48 degrees as it was sitting on the bridge, and we picked it up almost like it was in motion.”

He noted that the scene was not out of the norm for his company, which typically assists in disasters and participates in training with police, fire and urban search and rescue crews.

Delp, however, had only seen situations similar to the bridge collapse in theory during school.

“I’m just kind of one to roll with the punches, and that’s how I’ve always been taught to go through wrestling,” said Delp, who wrestled for Kiski Area High School. “Improvise, adapt and overcome. That’s what we thrive on here, that’s what I thrive on, that’s what the company I’m part of thrives on. And that’s our whole mentality: The harder the challenge, the more excited we get.”

Pyros said that Delp “got his teeth cut pretty quickly,” and jumped right in to working alongside him and other crew members.

Despite being new to the job, Delp didn’t think twice about working at the scene, enduring frigid temperatures and grueling hours.

“All the moving parts in this, it was imperative that we all worked together and we had clear communication,” he said. “That’s what really Pittsburgh’s about. In times of crisis everybody does their part.

“The church, the auto shop on the end, the pizza parlors,” he said, referring to places at the bridge’s end on South Braddock Avenue, “that’s what the Pittsburgh community’s about, just coming together.”

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