Good lord what could have caused a total failure like that! I am glad to hear there are no deaths at least at the moment. Lots of prayers to all involved.
I too am hoping all people involved are okay....so scary, I mean I could see an earthquake doing that but not it just collapsing for no reason. So terrible. Our train went right by there......
I was watching the first reports of it right after it happened...
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think an accident is the cause of this... this is just to large... all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like this? In only the certain sections? I don't think so..
Mark I'm thinking that them working on the bridge is probably something that might have weakened it....someone will have a LOT of explaining to do about this.
I feel so bad for these people and their familes. So bad.
You think you are safe on a bridge, but I guess you never know.
OMG! i just turned it on......i can't help but think "terrorists"? it probably was weakened while doing work on it, but so much fell?!?!?! those poor people
i'm not thinking terrorist, (i could be wrong) i'm thinking barge hitting the supports. quite a few years ago, a barge hit the supports of a railroad bridge in mobile bay (alabama) and caused the amtrak to derail. wasn't nice and the tugboat captain wasn't sure he had hit the bridge :mad: so he didn't report it. he thought he something else
i remember that.....i hope your right and it is not an attack. right now i guess it really does not matter why, all that matters is those people and families....that must be awful to have to go thru something like that.....
DH read about this on MSN & told me.--at the time he read it there were no fatalities. That whole storey is so sad. it makes you realize that one jsut nefvfer knows. praying for all involved.
________
Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain!! .....
Just a report to let you know that Jessica is OK. I just talked to her on the phone. She is nowhere near that area and doesn't drive on that bridge. She said she wondered if anyone on here would wonder about her!! There is a storming going through there and she is not on her PC. I told her I would give you all the heads-up that she is fine!!!
Whew.....I knew she wasn't really near, but I know she was about an hour from the Amtrak station in St Paul/Minneapolis.
Glad to hear that she's at home and fine.
Still very sad for all the families/people involved in this tragic event. I mean I go across a bridge near here that is close to a mile long. I never even thought about it just collapsing and it's an old bridge. Something you wouldn't expect.
I have family in the St. Paul area but most of them either don't drive or they rarely go to Minneapolis. I should call my grandparents and see if they heard about it and make sure everyone I know is fine. Reminds me of a movie I saw that was based on true events. Ever seen Mothman Prophecies? Scary.
Thank you Shirley for calling last night and letting everybody here know that I was okay.
It is a terrible thing that happened. Right now there are 4 reported deaths and over 60 injured. They said there was at least 50 cars on the bridge when it collapsed. There was also a school bus full of kids but they are all okay. Coverage of this was on our local stations all night last night and we watched it almost the whole time. I couldn't believe what it! When I first saw it, I said to James....where is this?...when he told me Minneapolis I couldn't believe it. Nothing like this has EVER happened here before. We don't have earthquakes here so it isn't something you would expect. I read somewhere that somebody thought maybe a barge hit a support. The only supports on this bridge were on the edges of the river. It was one big arch going over the river. They didn't want to put any piers in the middle because they didn't want to slow down river traffic. The bridge has been there like that for 40 years. Hopefully they rethink it when they rebuild it.
The steel-arched bridge, built in 1967, rose 64 feet above the river and stretched 1,900 feet across the water. It was built with a single 458-foot-long steel arch to avoid the need for piers that might interfere with river navigation.
My guess its a structure failure. There was a report of lack of redundancy in the design, ie belt and suspenders scenario. There wasn't a second system set in place in case the main support failed. :(
We had structure problems in Milwaukee, WI with our expansion bridge but it had pier support and was able to be repaired.
Here is an article from one of our local new station's website for those of you interested in following along with finding out how this happened.
Minnesota bridge inspectors found no structural flaws last year or the year before in the interstate bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said.
"They notified us from an engineering standpoint the deck might need to be rehabilitated or replaced in 2020 or beyond, but no immediate or structural problems with the bridge," Pawlenty said at a news conference in Minneapolis.
Road crews had been working on the 40-year-old bridge's deck, joints, guardrails and lights this week, with lane closures scheduled overnight on Tuesday and Wednesday. The state Department of Transportation couldn't immediately say whether some lanes were closed when the bridge failed during the evening rush hour.
"None of it would be related to the structure," said Bob McFarlin, assistant to Minnesota Transportation Commissioner Carol Molnau, who was on her way back from a conference in China after being informed about the tragedy.
McFarlin said the road work was "routine, minor maintenance." The contract for the work was worth about $9 million. He said construction workers were on the bridge when it collapsed and not all of them had been accounted for.
The bridge was scheduled for another inspection this fall, he said.
A MnDOT timeline for construction projects slated the bridge for a replacement sometime between 2015 and 2023, at an estimated cost of $122 million, according to a 2008 transportation plan posted on the agency's Web site.
The eight-lane bridge was the first of its size to get a computerized anti-icing system in 2001, according to another report on the site. McFarlin said that system sprayed deicing chemicals on the road deck during certain winter weather conditions, the same chemicals that would otherwise be applied by road crews.
"It's not part of the structure of the bridge," he said.
State Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Steve Murphy said the condition of bridges in Minnesota generally has been a topic of concern, but he couldn't recall the Interstate 35W Mississippi River bridge coming up during those discussions.
"I know the work that many of the bridge inspectors do for the state of Minnesota, and we do really good work," said Murphy, DFL-Red Wing. "If they said that that bridge in 2006 was in good shape, I believe it was in good shape. What happened today, it's probably going to be weeks or months before we know."
The state Emergency Operations Center opened Wednesday evening in downtown St. Paul to offer state assistance to Minneapolis responders dealing with the tragedy, said MnDOT spokesman Kevin Gutknecht.
thank you jess. please keep us updated as i do not have any form of tv in my house, and the internet/radio news will only follow this so long. i'd really like to know what happened.
Thanks, Jessica. I'd like to hear more reports as they come up. It all doesn't make sense. And the TV news has already slacked off reporting much. But it sounds like the only thing to report right now is every department saying "It's not my fault" Like rambunctious kids standing around a broken lamp.
~Tina
Drama Free Zone. What every gardener loves the most, Begins and ends in rich compost. (Tina)
I will definitely keep all of you updated. They said on the news last night that it could take up to a year for the investigations to be completed. They are having a hard time getting the divers into the river to search for more missing people because there is so much debris in the river and the current is moving fast and it is just swirling. It was too dangerous yesterday afternoon to allow any divers in there. They also said that there is a list of all of the bridges in Minnesota along with their ratings. This bridge was listed as #43 which they said means that there are 42 bridges in worse condition in the state of Minnesota. They are supposed to be releasing that list to the public. That will be interesting to see.
Federal officials said Thursday the investigation into the cause of the Interstate-35W bridge collapse could take a year or more. Officials intend to reconstruct the bridge, on its side, over time.
In the meantime, we are learning there may be more "deficient" bridges around the state.
Len Levine, a former transportation commissioner and now a national transportation consultant, says there are at least 1,000 bridges in Minnesota rated at the same level of "structurally deficient" and tens of thousands nationally, the result of stressed-out budgets everywhere.
Levine believes folks are doing the best they have with what they've got. But, the issue may be that institutional standards are too low.
KARE 11 found a list of "deficient" bridges in this state. There are many considered to be in worse condition than the one that ended up in the water Wednesday night.
This bridge was a particular concern because it's the grand-daddy of them all. Before last night, it carried more traffic than any other bridge in the state, over 100,000 vehicles a day.
This bridge has been on the state radar for years, and was ranked 'structurally deficient' since 1990. They upped the number of inspections from every-other-year to every year in 1993.
Just six years ago, in a report by the University of Minnesota, they went so far as to say "fatigue cracking of the deck truss is not likely." They said: "no problem for the foreseeable future. And, "MnDOT does not need to prematurely replace this bridge..because of fatigue cracking, avoiding the high costs associated with such large projects."
Clearly those conclusions were wrong.
Are our standards too low? Did someone miss something on the inspections? Were they just trying to do too much with too little? All questions many people are asking. Answers aren't likely to come soon or easily.
The I-35 Bridge is what engineers call a "non-redundant structure". That means if a single part fails, the whole thing collapses.
Another irony today - the governor actually used that word, redundancy, as he announced a host of independent investigations he's ordered.
"To parallel the work of state and federal investigations," Pawlenty said, "we want redundancy."
It would have been nice to have it on that 1967 bridge too.
Among the orders of the governor today is the immediate inspection of three other bridges in this state, built the same way the I-35 Bridge was. They include bridges in St. Cloud, near Sandstone and in Osceola. All of them cross rivers.
Also, there is a priority list of bridges in the state in need of replacement.
KARE 11 requested the list from MnDOT to learn which bridges they think were in even worse shape than the one that fell into the river. A MnDOT employee in the bridge maintenance division said that they consider that list non-public. When Governor Pawlenty was questioned about that today, he indicated the list will be made public.
I also read that the divers were able to go in today. They have found 4 vehicles so far and there were no victims inside but they got license plate info to forward to the agencies working with the families. They know that there are many more vehicles down there that have to be searched but it could be days or weeks before they get to them all.
Those pictures are amazing! Is your friend a professional photographer or does she just live in the area and went and snapped some pics? Sorry if I'm being too nosy, just curious.
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