HUGE BRIDGE COLLAPSE IN MINNEAPOLIS - Massive section of bridge has collapsed into th

danger boy

HUGE BRIDGE COLLAPSE IN MINNEAPOLIS - Massive section of bridge has collapsed into the Mississippi River.

just took place.. http://www.krem.com/

The Interstate 35W Mississippi River bridge near University Avenue has collapsed into the river.

Both the northbound and southbound lanes of 35W are lying in the Mississippi River.

There are multiple cars in the river and a couple cars on fire. According to one witness, there was a school bus full of children on the bridge.

Cars are still on the bridge.

Tons of concrete have collapsed and people are injured. Survivors are being carried up the riverbank.

Some people are stranded on parts of the bridge that aren't completely in the water.

A tractor-trailer is on fire at the collapse scene.

Some cars are still precariously perched on the bridge. Sections of the bridge are mangled, some are pointing up in the air and some are in the river.

"It is just horrific," said witness Marilyn Franzen, who saw the bridge collapse. Franzen said she saw a school bus that managed to stop before the going over the edge of the bridge that she said was carrying 20-30 children.

According to witnesses, cars are crushed and mangled under the bridge where it collapsed onto the shore of the river. Street signs also crushed cars.

The road has been under construction since the beginning of the summer.

Stay tuned to WCCO.com and WCCO-TV for more information on this breaking news story.

opus

Holy Crap.

Tv going on

opus

how the hell does this happen?

dorokusai

I'm wondering what brilliant newscaster will immediately say "It's unclear at this time whether this was a terrorist attack...."

www.cnn.com is a little easier to navigate if anyone is interested.

opus

I got five bucks on Shepard Smith

dane_peterson

Yeah, this is pretty crazy. I have some friends who are down there checking it out right now... they say it's hard to believe.

opus

stupid, irresponsible speculation to follow based on news coverage

How does a constuction worker cause a entire fuc^%^$g bridge (4 sections) to collapse?

Doesn't make sense to me.

Polk user

opus wrote: »

I got five bucks on Shepard Smith

8:19pm Shep Says Its not a terrorist attack.

MrNightly

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20079534/?GT1=10252

Crazy...

opus

FYI


7:19CST

Homeland Security is monitering but does not think it is terrorism. Most likely construction related.

dkg999

I went over that bridge a couple of weeks ago! Holy bat crap! Someone is going to be in deep sh$t!

audiobliss

I walked through the kitchen while Dad was watching the news. He said they reported the bridge is 40 years old, implying they think it was a structural problem.

Dad then pointed out the bridges in Winston Salem (where I do most of my driving) are 55 years old! :eek:

bobman1235

40 years old doesn't seem that old....

I drive over the Tobin Bridge all the time, which is 57 years old.

Scary stuff, either way.

Fireman32

Very scary stuff. Was watching it for a few hours last night on CNN. The latest i heard was the death toll was up to 7 people.

engtaz

Very sad

m00npie

audiobliss wrote: »

I walked through the kitchen while Dad was watching the news. He said they reported the bridge is 40 years old, implying they think it was a structural problem.

Dad then pointed out the bridges in Winston Salem (where I do most of my driving) are 55 years old! :eek:

Structural Problem yes, age no. If age had something to do with it who the hell would want to cross the Brooklyn Bridge or any bridge in Manhattan for that matter?

If the engineering company & the construction company that built it are still in existence today, they are probably shitting themselves right now. Typically this kind of stuff happens when an earthquake occurs or the bridge has been struck by a substantial object. In this case, probably a product of poor design and construction and probably neglect in Maintenance. I’m sure the harsh winters certainly don’t help either.

I hope the death toll does not get any higher. Very sad!

jakelm

They just had an inspection not long ago, rating the bridge a 4 out of 10 (10 being best). Spent the tax dollars somewhere else. Innocent peole are paying for it now.

Danny Tse

I was listening to the radio this morning and one of the newscasters mentioned about the heat in the area.

Am I missing something here? How hot is it over there?

irishaz

It's pretty warm here, at least by Minnesota standards. It's pushing 90 every day for the last week or so.

madmax

40 years is nothing for a bridge.
madmax

DarqueKnight

m00npie wrote: »

If the engineering company & the construction company that built it are still in existence today, they are probably shitting themselves right now.

Maybe not. Most civil engineering/civil construction firms like to overbuild things in order to guard against catastropic failure and the huge financial liability such failure would bring. Some states unfortunately have a habit of "cutting corners" when it comes to public works projects. Often there is a culture of selecting the lowest bidder instead of the most qualified firm. I don't know if Minnesota has a history of such practices.

m00npie wrote: »

Typically this kind of stuff happens when an earthquake occurs or the bridge has been struck by a substantial object.

True. Appropriate design and construction practices should consider such possibilities.

m00npie wrote: »

In this case, probably a product of poor design and construction and probably neglect in Maintenance. I’m sure the harsh winters certainly don’t help either.

Since the bridge stood for 40 years, I would hesitate to blame poor design. I would speculate that increased traffic loads and neglect of maintenance are the culprits. I think this is a simple matter of a structure being bombarded over time by loads it was not designed to handle in addition to lack of appropriate maintenance and modification to meet modern traffic loads. I am sure that when this bridge was designed over 40 years ago, its designers did not and could not conceive that the bridge would be weighted down for hours every day by bumper to bumper traffic, much of which consists of high gross weight vehicles.

jakelm wrote: »

They just had an inspection not long ago, rating the bridge a 4 out of 10 (10 being best). Spent the tax dollars somewhere else. Innocent peole are paying for it now.

I can understand neglecting maintenance on a road that has solid earth underneath, but how can any sane, rational, public official neglect maintenance on a bridge 60 feet above a river? Looks like the money Minnesota saved on bridge maintenance will be paid many times over in liability lawsuits.

jakelm

HEAT????? ...I'm in south central Louisiana... Hot and humid... When it rains, steam pours from the blacktop.

Danny Tse

Go to Yahoo.com....there's a raw video of the bridge's collapse

krabby5

That bridge has been under construction since June...I think it was just surface maintenance though..was supposed to re-open in September..

I drive that stretch every day to and from work...however since June I have taken a different route because lanes are being reduced..

That bridge was probably the worst bridge that could have collapsed in MN...gonna really shake traffic up for a long time..

but all that matters now is the people who were on it and their families..

DarqueKnight

Minn. Bridge Problems Uncovered in 1990
Updated 7:06 PM ET August 2, 2007

By Sharon Cohen and Brian Bakst

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was "structurally deficient," yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections.

"We thought we had done all we could," state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan told reporters not far from the mangled remains of the span. "Obviously something went terribly wrong."

Questions about the cause of the collapse and whether it could have been prevented arose Thursday as authorities shifted from rescue efforts to a grim recovery, searching for bodies that may be hidden beneath the river's swirling currents.

The official death count from Wednesday's rush-hour collapse stood at four, with another 79 injuries. But police said the death count would surely grow because bodies had been spotted in the water and as many as 30 people were still reported missing.

In 1990, the federal government gave the I-35W bridge a rating of "structurally deficient," citing significant corrosion in its bearings. That made it one of 77,000 bridges in that category nationwide, 1,160 in Minnesota alone.

The designation means some portions of the bridge needed to be scheduled for repair or replacement, and it was on a schedule for inspection every two years.

During the 1990s, later inspections found fatigue cracks and corrosion in the steel around the bridge's joints. Those problems were repaired. Starting in 1993, the state said, the bridge was inspected annually instead of every other year.

A 2005 federal inspection also rated the bridge structurally deficient, giving it a 50 on scale of 100 for structural stability.

White House, press secretary Tony Snow said while the inspection didn't indicate the bridge was at risk of failing, "If an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions."

Gov. Tim Pawlenty responded Thursday by ordering an immediate inspection of all bridges in the state with similar designs, but said the state was never warned that the bridge needed to be closed or immediately repaired.

"There was a view that the bridge was ultimately and eventually going to need to be replaced," he said. "But it appears from the information that we have available that a timeline for that was not immediate or imminent, but more in the future."

The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge was Minnesota's busiest bridge, carrying 141,000 vehicles a day. It was in the midst of mostly repaving repairs when it buckled during the evening rush hour. Dozens of cars plummeted more than 60 feet into the Mississippi River, some falling on top one of another. A school bus sat on the angled concrete.

Engineers wondered whether heavy traffic might have contributed to the collapse. Studies of the bridge have raised concern about cracks caused by metal fatigue.

"I think everybody is looking at fatigue right now, fatigue due to heavy traffic," said Kent Harries, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the University of Pittsburgh's School of Engineering. "This is an interstate bridge that sees a lot of truck traffic."

When conducting inspections, Dorgan said, inspectors get within an arm's length of various components of a bridge. If they spot cracks, that leads to more hands-on testing to determine the depth and extent of the fissures.

The collapsed bridge's last full inspection was completed June 15, 2006. The report shows previous inspectors' notations of fatigue cracks in the spans approaching the river, including one 4 feet long that was reinforced with bolted plates. A 1993 entry noted 3,000 feet of cracks in the surface of the bridge; they were later sealed.

That inspection and one a year earlier raised no immediate concerns about the bridge, which wasn't a candidate for replacement for another 13 years.

In a 2001 report from the University of Minnesota's Department of Civil Engineering, inspectors found some girders had become distorted. Engineers also saw evidence of fatigue on trusses and said the bridge might collapse if part of the truss gave way under the eight-lane freeway.

"A bridge of that vintage you always have to be concerned about that," said Richard Sause, director of the Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems Center at Lehigh University. "In a steel bridge of that age, sure you'd be concerned about those kind of things and be diligent about looking after it. And it seems like they were."

It takes time for a fatigue crack to develop, but a crack can then expand rapidly to become a fracture, Garrett said. "If you get a crack that goes undetected it would be something that appears to happen more rapidly."

At the scene, about 15 divers and a dozen boats were in the water, but the search was proceeding slowly because of strong currents and low visibility. By mid-afternoon, they had located four submerged cars besides the dozen or so visible from the surface.

"We have a number of vehicles that are underneath big pieces of concrete, and we do know we have some people in those vehicles," Dolan said. "We know we do have more casualties at the scene."

Meanwhile, relatives who couldn't find their loved ones at hospitals gathered in a hotel ballroom for any news, hoping for the best.

Ronald Engebretsen, 57, was searching for his wife, Sherry. His daughter last heard from her when she left work Wednesday in downtown Minneapolis. Her cell phone has picked up with voice mail ever since.

"We are left with the hope that there is a Jane Doe in a hospital somewhere that's her." Sherry Engebretsen was later confirmed as one of the dead.

nadams

Per an article on CNN -

"Construction crews resurfacing the Interstate 35W bridge reported the structure began to wobble as they removed pavement from it, the severity of the wobble increasing as they took up more concrete"

Wouldn't you stop when the structure starts to wobble?

Demiurge

I love how every bridge in the country is in danger now coupled with all of the Monday morning quarterbacking. It was something terrible that happened. We should learn from it, but why all of the hysteria?

I can see people directly affected by it, or who live in the area being a little hysterical, but all of the doofuses on YouTube just trying to get their name out there because of a tradgedy is so trite and uncalled for.

Bridges are fine. If it wasn't for this it would probably be shark attacks again. :rolleyes:

treitz3

nadams wrote:

Wouldn't you stop when the structure starts to wobble?

Bridges are supposed to wobble and sway. Most folks don't feel it as they are traveling down a bridge at 60-70 mph, but if you were to stop and get out of the vehicle, you might just feel yourself move up and down 6-7" and sideways 2-3" depending on the height, span and wind factors. This is normal. Much like an airplanes wing flexes.

Yes, mass hysteria is very unreasonable and it goes back to "is it safer to cross the road, than.........". I have a feeling this bridge will become one of the great engineering blunders/investigations of this century, to be read about by our grandchildren. The design was a time proven design [arch] which dates back to roman times, so materials, corrosion, a mixture thereof, or some other factor had to have had a major influence on the bridge coming down. Time will tell.

bobman1235

I wouldn't say the "bridges are fine", but they're certainly no worse off than they ever were, it's just that the feelings of invulnerability that everyone convinces themselves of are now shaken.

It's like a paraphrase of what Tommy Lee Jones says to Will Smith in Men In Black.

"There's always a bridge on the verge of collapsing, or a tunnel on the verge of caving in. The only way people get on with their day to day lives is that they dont'... know about it."

Demiurge

Tires blow out on cars and people die every day because of it, i'm sure.

Most of us don't freak out about the possibility of that and vigorously inspect our tires everytime we get into our cars. Even if we did it doesn't mean accidents won't occur. There is risk in everything we do.

We have our maintenance schedules and have every reason to trust things will be okay in the interim. However, accidents can and do happen. Bridges are really no different.

There's no reason that every tragedy needs to be turned into an epidemic. They're not. For the most part, bridges in this country are fine, and those that aren't will get replaced/repaired just like our own cars would. Sometimes there are oversights (like in MN, possibly....), but I don't see why that's cause for the hysteria we see over this bridge collapse as it pertains to the rest of the country.

The media is to blame for it, and so are those who buy into it.



Screen shot from the MSN home page today.

The media always seems to find a story they can't drop. Last year it was shark attacks. Previously it was hurricanes, etc...

Scaring people to death about everything seems to be the goal, however irrational all these fears may be. Terrorism is a threat, but how many of us are scared to go into skyscrapers?

ohskigod

Lot of the bridges in NY area, especially the really old ones, were very over engineered. which is cool. apparently this bridge wasnt.

also, lack of redundency will factor. I'm going with a darkhorse prediction of that deicing system installed in 2000 being a factor.