One thing leads to another. Look at this snip from the story and link above..

The flame resembled a stained-glass sculpture lying on its specially designed flatbed truck. That's because the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who also designed Mount Rushmore, 'put all the holes in it with amber glass' during a 1916 redesign, park Superintendent John Piltzecker said. 'It led to the flame's deterioration.'

The torch was further weakened in July of that year by the Black Tom explosion, an act of German sabotage at a munitions plant nearby in Jersey City.

The things we never knew...