I've been reading this thread and can't understand how boat wakes can
destroy a bridge. I think I read that parts of the bridge are falling
off. How do boats manage to do that?

A $27,000 wake fine in this case is insane.

The best example is Venice, Italy. Boat wakes are literally eating away at
the city's infrastructure. Therefore, they have very severe no wake
policies in place. In order to film the high speed boat chase scenes in the
recent remake of the movie "The Italian Job", the producers of the movie had
to get very brief, very explicit, and I would imagine very expensive waivers
from the city. Not hard to imagine how the same forces could cause damage
to a concrete bridge with it's foundation in the water and constantly being
subjected to nearby high speed boat traffic.

RG