Lake County Commissioners endorse Cline Avenue Bridge memorial (2024)

CROWN POINT — The Lake County Board of Commissioners is adding its voice to others in Northwest Indiana calling for a permanent memorial honoring the 14 construction workers killed in one of the deadliest accidents in state history.

On Wednesday, the three commissioners unanimously approved a resolution endorsing a memorial to commemorate the lives lost April 15, 1982, when the under-construction Cline Avenue Bridge in East Chicago buckled and fell after one of its piers blew out — crushing the men under slabs of concrete, steel girders and rubble.

"There's nothing to honor these folks permanently and I thought it was important for us to weigh in," said Commissioner Mike Repay, D-Hammond.

Repay told his colleagues — Commissioners Kyle Allen Sr., D-Gary; and Jerry Tippy, R-Schererville — he doesn't know what role the county will play in the development and funding of a memorial to the tragedy.

But Repay said it's important the county participate in the process as it moves forward, and his fellow commissioners agreed.

Steelworker Terry Steagall, a United Steelworkers union activist who was working that day 42 years ago at nearby Inland Steel, is leading the effort to erect a memorial to the dead at the northwest corner of Block and Michigan avenues.

Steagall also is open to including components in the memorial recognizing the the 393 steelworkers who died in accidents at Inland Steel, as well as local police and firefighters lost in the line of duty.

The Cline Avenue Bridge, eventually completed in 1986, was closed in 2009 and demolished in 2013 after state transportation officials found it no longer was structurally sound due to corrosion. It was replaced by a new toll bridge that opened in 2021.