Bridge Collapses Into Miss. River

A freeway bridge spanning the Mississippi River collapsed during evening rush hour Wednesday, sending many cars into the water.

Tons of concrete collapsed and there were injuries, authorities said. Survivors were being carried up the riverbank.

Some people were stranded on parts of the bridge that weren't completely submerged.The entire span of the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed about 6:05 p.m. where the freeway crosses the river near University Avenue in Minneapolis.

Source: ABC News ;CNN

Local news says that there is one known death due to drowning so far and multiple injuries. Luckily all of the school children in the bus made it out safely.

I'm hearing and reading 3 people dead so far. 50-ish cars involved? Oy... interesting to see a bridge that destroyed just from a collapse.

Scary stuff.

Reminds me of The Mothman Prophecies.

The Twins baseball game on Thursday has been postponed. They were also going to open their new stadium.

Could this be part of a terrorist attack? How old was the bridge?

Not an attack. The bridge was built in 1967, and was under some re-construction work (mostly on the road surface, potholes and such). I read one report that a structural engineer indicated that it seemed to be a steel failure, not a concrete failure, and that the bridge had passed both of its previous two inspections in the past two years.


EDIT: Minnesota born and raised here. My condolences to the families of those who died.

Damn. We'll probably see lawsuits of scale we have never seen.

thats just sad & what sucks is it was rush hour even if anybody wanted to throw the car in reverse couldnt without hitting others

I found this image of the interstate W35 bridge before it collapsed... it looks pretty flimsy for a bridge if you ask me:

http://www.mymotormaid.com/news/bridge.html

Wow, that's significantly higher off the ground than I thought it would be (for some reason). That'd be a hell of a ride (if you survived it).

That'd kill your suspension though.

Yeah, but think about how great your mpg is while you're in mid-air!

It was a 40-year-old arch bridge, it's not going to be nearly as durable as something like a suspension bridge. Oddly enough, the bridge was actually undergoing some renovation just before it collapsed, I wonder if that in any way compromised the foundations of the bridge.

ahh ok. Just checking. Stange this had collapsed.it was Bulit in 1967 should have stayed. Now a local bridge, located in portland oregon, was bulit in 1925



The Sellwood Bridge. Already showing cracks, they had to limet the bridge to 10 tons, causing the busses and trucks to go else ware. They are working on a way to get enough money to replace the bridge. The bridge, the only closest way to get to Oaks Park. A Local amusment park just on the other side of the river. I do bleive the Sellwood bridge is the oldest in the city of portland. Only time untill this one colpases.



Yeah, wheres the support? theres NO support...

Yet the bridge has passed two inspections in the last two years. Perhaps they have been using clerks who only look for obvious cracks and not professional engineers to do the inspections.

Yeah, I think those were 'state' inspections. It seems that a federal inspection rated the bridge with a score of 50 (scale of 1 to 120). I guess it makes you wonder how close to "fail" those other "pass" ratings were...

It's no surprise it collapsed, from the looks of it I could of blown it down. Maybe they should try x-ray inspection or more intensive inspection methods in the future. Anyway, as an engineer it would be interesting to see the report.

I live in a Southern suburb of Minneapolis and, as someone who has driven over this bridge numerous times, it makes me shiver to think about what was going through people's heads when they flipped into the water. One woman told her story of immediately rolling her window down and swimming out. The water is only 8 to 10ft (2-1/2 to 3m) deep in that area.

What really scares me is what would have happened had I been on there and I had my son in the car. Could I have gotten him out in time? Would we both be dead? I scares the hell out of me just to think of that happening.

My condolences to all who are affected by this. I'm sure I know someone who will have lost someone in this tragedy.

Can you imagine getting caught up in that... Video of it sure looks odd, that bridge dropped like a rock. The entire thing dropped, be interesting to hear what happened... Condolences to anyone involved...

This was unbelievable yesterday (still is). I live about 15 minutes from that bridge and had to use it quite a bit when I worked at my last job. I only wish the best to those involved and their families and friends.

The local news said engineers expect that a replacement bridge will not be up until 2009-2010.

^ lets hope this new one will have better support

Here is the video of the collapse,

http://www.break.com/index/security-tape-o...i-collapse.html

Good Lord!

Shitting hell. I hope casualties are kept to a minimum.

I would love to know how someone started recording it, if no one knew it was about to happen. Clever I'll say.

They don't know why the bridge fell. They don't know how many people are missing. A lot of cars (people) was washed up and down stream.

So sorry for the families.

No mystery. It was a security camera in the area.

Makes sense now. Thank ya.

Security camera has crappy FPS.
Last thing i was thinking of when I heard of the disaster, btw.

still, its caught on tape, and thats all that matters...

I actually heard on the news just this morning that there are about 70 000 (!) bridges all around America which is in the same condition.
I heard this on the morning news on one of the national Norwegian radio channels. Kinda disturbing to say the least..

My condolances to all how is affected by this terrible tragedy

Thank goodness I live on a mainland. After this, they better make those inspections more thorough.

Mainland? Minneapolis is mainland. It has at least a couple thousand miles of land in each direction. This was over a river, not an ocean.

Anyway, I'm planning to visit the site tomorrow. I'll post any picture I take that are worth while.

The news is absolutely ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, my condolences to those lost, but come on. One bridge collapses and the media acts like this stuff happens every day and will keep happening every day, as if this one bridge collapsing will cause all other bridges to simultaneously go and decide to collapse also, even though they haven't done so yet. All they're doing is instilling needless fear, which they're pretty darn good at these days.

-Spenser

True, there may be media over-sensationalizing. There are also individuals that may be over-paranoid about crossing bridges.

However, when you have a failure like this, it is sensible to the point of being negligent if you don't do it to perform a check for similar situations on other equipment.

Where I work, if we have a catastrophic robot failure that knocks out production, it is my duty to investigate and see if this same failure mode could affect other robots. If so, then I need to check the other robots. Period.

(granted, I don't have the media yelling that the sky is falling everywhere I go)

Holy old thread batman

CLOSE this thread already!

Wow. I clicked on the topic, thinking that another bridge had fallen into the Mississippi, and then I looked at the date. Old indeed.

I was wondering how it had collapsed Wednesday evening, when it's only Wednesday morning, then I saw the OP's date.

Wow.

I saw the bump post today (bumped by albertjames), and the previous from Aug 8^th, and just continued, not realizing that the August 8^th wasn't a few weeks ago, but rather last year (2007!)

thread closed