Three more bodies recovered from Florida bridge collapse

Three more bodies have now been recovered from vehicles crushed under a bridge that collapsed over a highway near Miami.

At least six people were killed when the pedestrian walkway near Florida International University (FIU) came down upon busy traffic on Thursday.

Workers are still clearing away the rubble to reach other more vehicles with bodies inside.

"The vehicles with the victims inside are being transferred to the medical examiner's office," said Juan Perez, director of Miami Dade Police.

"That's where their bodies will be removed from the vehicle and identified so that we can have one hundred percent confirmation as to their identity so we can bring some closure to the families."

The recovery work continues as it emerged officials had decided just hours before the bridge collapsed that a crack in the structure was not a safety concern.

FIU said it held a meeting last Thursday with the private contractor for the overall bridge design and officials from Florida's Department of Transport.

An engineer "concluded there were no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge", the university said.

The bridge, which linked FIU's campus with the city of Sweetwater, collapsed three hours after the meeting ended.

Earlier it was revealed another engineer overseeing the bridge had telephoned a state official two days before the collapse to cracks.

The engineer left a voicemail message saying his team had observed "some cracking" at one end of the bridge and that repairs were warranted, "but from a safety perspective we don't see that there's any issue there, so we're not concerned about it from that perspective."

The voicemail message was not received until after the bridge came down.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it could not yet confirm whether any cracking contributed to the collapse.