just herd on the radio, came home for lunch.
peace to all the victims and their familys.
Bridge collapse
just herd on the radio, came home for lunch.
peace to all the victims and their familys.
Bridge Collapse in Minnesota on Mississippi River
http://news.bostonherald.com/nationa...icleid=1014795
MINNEAPOLIS - An interstate bridge jammed with rush-hour traffic suddenly broke into huge sections and collapsed into the Mississippi River last night, pitching dozens of cars 60 feet into the water and killing at least six people.
The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, was in the midst of being repaired and had several lanes closed when it crumbled.
Jamie Winegar of Houston was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic shortly after 6 p.m. when all of a sudden she started hearing “boom, boom, boom and we were just dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping.”
The car she was riding in landed on top of a smaller car but did not fall into the water. She said her nephew yelled, “’It’s an earthquake!’ and then we realized the bridge was collapsing.”
Catherine Yankelevich, 29, was on the bridge when “it started shaking, cars started flying and I was falling and saw the water,” she told the Mineapolis Star Tribune.
Her car was in the river when she climbed out the driver’s side window and swam to shore uninjured.
“It seemed like a movie, it was pretty scary,” said Yankelevich, who is from California and survived the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
Many vehicles, including at least one semi-trailer, were on fire. People were reported to be floundering in the river. Rescuers rushed to help people escape cars trapped in the V-shaped hollow where the bridge had caved in.
Mayor R.T. Rybak said at least six people were killed. There were no immediate reports on the total number of injured, but Dr. Joseph Clinton, emergency medical chief at Hennepin County Medical Center, said the hospital treated 28 injured people - including six who were in critical condition.
Other hospitals also were treating the injured. Clinton said at least one of the victims had drowned.
The Homeland Security Department also said the collapse did not appear to be terrorism-related.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty said the bridge was inspected by the Minnesota Department of Transportation in 2005 and 2006 and that no structural problems were noted. “There were some minor things that needed attention,” he said.
The steel-arched bridge, which was built in 1967, rises about 64 feet above the river. An estimated 50 vehicles plunged into the water and onto the land below, the Star-Tribune reported.
A burning truck and a school bus clung to one slanted slab. The bus had just crossed the bridge before it crumpled into pieces.
Christine Swift’s 10-year-old daughter, Kaleigh, was on the bus, returning from a field trip and called her mother. “She was screaming, ‘The bridge collapsed!”’ Swift said.
She said a police officer told her all the kids got off the bus safely.
Peter Siddons, a senior vice president at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, was heading north over the bridge toward his home to White Bear Lake, Minn., when he heard “crunching.”
“I saw this rolling of the bridge,” he said. “It kept collapsing, down, down, down until it got to me.”
Siddons’ car dropped with the bridge, and the nose of his car rolled into the car in front of him and stopped. He got out of his car, jumped over the crevice between the highway lanes and crawled up the steeply tilted section of bridge to land, where he jumped to the ground.
“I thought I was dead,” he said. “Honestly, I honestly did. I thought it was over.”
It appeared that the center section of the bridge dropped straight down and pancaked in the middle of the river, leaving several vehicles stranded on a broken island of wreckage. As divers plumbed the waters, other rescuers searched frantically for victims amid broken, zigzagged sections of blacktop. Some of the injured were carried up the riverbanks.
Dozens of vehicles were scattered and stacked on top of each other amid the rubble. Some people were stranded on parts of the bridge that weren’t completely in the water.
Many motorists could have been headed to the Minnesota Twins game not far from the bridge. Team officials decided to play the game after conferring with department of public safety officials. It was decided that sending 20,000-25,000 people back into traffic could hinder rescue efforts, said team president Dave St. Peter.
The bridge was built with a single 458-foot-long steel arch to avoid putting any piers in the water that might interfere with river navigation.
big bens is better..urs just has l2 lines in it haha
but yea..9 peeps dead 20 missing
damn ...
apparently they were doing repairs on it while it fell. they probably removed a piece of material that was a counter balance, which initially would stop the bridge from resonating. a resonating bridge will easily break. they should have closed the bridge down while doing the repairs. a tragic mis-calculation. shit like this puts me off being an engineer cause one mistake in design and you will have blood on your hands.
well the repairs would tame months to do .. the bridge i a busy one
...
bridges get repaird like this all the time..its normle to repair a brigde and leave one side to run
..im a brdge tech..
they went on it at the time....when it fell tho.....that the thing..the fult go's to the inspectors..for saying what was wrong was only the minore things,..aperntly they missed something big
usually from how its done in europe most of the heavy work is done at night. i agree with the fault going to the inspectors. how old was the bridge by the way???Originally Posted by 100pr00f
a little more than 50 years old
its the same way here aswell the hever stuff is done at night..they wernt working on the bridge when it fell
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