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I posted this buried in another thread...

I left work at 5:45 last night in St. Paul, and headed to Minneapolis on I94, only to be stopped in traffic as the I35 bridge collapsed at 6:05 PM. I was very lucky, as I was headed to I35 and across the bridge that collapsed. My daughter crossed over the bridge about 10 minutes before the collapse. This is a terrible and tragic event for the people of the Twin Cities and the state. This interstate is the main artery north to south into and out of Minneapolis. It connects the northern suburbs of St. Paul and south Minneapolis and the southern suburbs. The location of the collapse is just as you enter into downtown Minneapolis from the north or come out of downtown from the south, with the University of Minnesota on the east side and downtown to the west. This is probably the most traveled roadway in the cities. My heart and prayers go out to the people involved.

Well said..

Tragic events are never good..

I'm sure blame will be distributed to the "Inspectors" that gave the bridge a "Clean Bill of Health"..

And rightfully so..  :(

We have a serious situation in the entire country with our infrastructure. The fact that these things seem to be put on the back burner is a huge problem.

The inspectors did their job from what I can tell. The recommendation after the past number of inspections to the bridge was that it should be replaced.

Not an easy task, because the bridge is a critical artery within the cities. Add to that the Goverment ranking system that is used to determine federal funding, and this bridge was not "bad" enough to get high enough on the list.

I think, the findings of the NTSB will be that the bridge was compromised structurally, and with the work that was being done, the support of the deck was weakened. Add to that, there were tons of materials (gravel and sand), as well as a number of double wide loaded cement trucks on the bridge. Bumber to bumber traffic in the four remaining lanes. At the time of the failure, the work crews were just starting to pour cement for the lane they were working on.

The above situation was never considered in any of the inspections or tests that were run on the bridges structural integrity. There is a definate communication link problem between those in charge of maintenance and the inspectors...

the cause of the failure was found to be that one end of the bridge had shifted some 50 feet while the other end had shifted only a few feet.  This is a bridge that was built in the 50's, if memory serves from the news reports, and being along a major waterway such as the mighty Mississip, that should have been taken into consideration by the inspection team.  soil around any type of waterway shift more and quicker that any other.  instead they have been inspecting only the bridge itself along with the footers and so forth.  the only real thing we can hope for out of this tragedy is that the inspections of our roadways will be re-evaluated to a more stringent criteria.

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Except it didn't have a clean bill of health, it was deemed 'structurally deficient' & rated a 50 out of 100 - whatever that all means.
We have a similar bridge in operation here they just released the rating as rated the same as that one in MN & another that is currently being used (heavily) that is rated a 25 out of 100.

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Not to be a jerk, but what you said is totally incorrect.

The bridge was built in 1967

The shift on the south end has been ruled out as the cause, and the NTSB said that it was a "result" of the collaspe. The support structure and pilings at the river did not move. They can be seen clearly in place in any picture of that part of the bridge. The roadway and steel shifted 81 feet as it fell.

There has been no conclusion as to the cause published or stated by anyone investigating the collapse.

Lonny,

That's the problem, a 50 ranking isn't bad enough, or at least far enough down the list to not get attention as far as funding. It seems crazy, but even a bridge that is considered "'structurally deficient" can still be operational until 2020, since that is when the I35 bridge was slated to be replaced...

Bridge Shift Info:

http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_65461 ... ck_check=1

I still say they will shift blame to someone else..

That's a common opinion.

I'm sure they will take their time before issuing a report. I think this is such a seriuos issue, that they will be force to tell the truth. The NTSB has an independent firm doing an inspection as well as their own team.

I just hope that the compromise in safety to the public that this event demonstrates, get's the attention it deserves. The fact that it has not been a priority to upgrade infrastructure, is really the cause of this disaster. It's time for our elected officials to step up to the plate and do something about it.

I grew up in Minneapolis.  People I've spoken to said it brought back memories of 9/11.

Pretty Much.

Not nearly as bad as 911, but the same feelings...particularly the feeling that this shouldn't happen...

Those nightmares you have that your falling off a building or a cliff...they should stay in our dreams, not in reality...

As a resident of Minneapolis, it has been doubly shocking and sad. From the floor of the office building I work on downtown I can see the debris and the mind reels.  I'm very proud of the people here in Minneapolis who have been doing whatever they can to help in anyway.  My firm took up a collection to help the families of the victims out the day after the accident.  What is galling is in this city so much time and energy has been dedicated by our elected officials worrying about building a new stadium for the the Twins (because they are demanding one, even though the one they play in currently is not very old) and more attention should have been given to ensuring our bridges are safe.

I agree with much of what you said. I am also a resident of the Twin Cities.

Just remember Interstate Highways, such as 35W is funded by the Federal government, not the State of Minnesota or the City of Minneapolis. State taxes go to state highways and the streets and roads in. The bridge that fell was the US goverment's juristiction.

MDOT had stated in the last two inspections that the bridge should be replaced. It was not high enough on the Goverment list to get funding.

Wow, Dennis, you were very close to having been there at the time. (your daughter too it sounds like)

Tragedies like that are so awful. I know absolutely nobody in Minneapolis, but I can imagine (yet, I can't imagine) the horror of not knowing if family/friends were there on the bridge or not, and if they're okay, and then finding out they were there...

What angers you is that this is not a "natural disaster". Somewhere along the line, somebody did something- or failed to- that caused this. Bridges don't just "fall".

We've already had it on the news here aplenty.. they are checking our bridges out. And Portland is FULL of them. I can't imagine what the death toll here would reach if a bridge in PDX were to fall. But.. that wasn't said to lessen the Minneapolis disaster.. one death, is one too many.

.

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If I ever get in a situation like that I pray that there are as many angels around (there must have been a thousand there!!) and willing hands to safety like what was freely given  that day.

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Thanks Blue.

I really wasn't that close. By the time I got down there, the road was already shut down and traffic was diverted. My daughter was much closer, and took the bridge everyday to work...she was pretty shaken when I saw her about an hour later.

You said that perfectly.

It could have been so much worse. We all thought there were a hundred cars under the rubble in the river. Haven been on the bridge at that time of day a few days earlier, with bumper to bumper traffic, I would have thought more...

my bad Dennis.  I was going off of the original news reports.  I coiuldn't remember the year of construction, though.  
So it was built in 1967 and spent it;s life on the water......Hey!  I was built in 1967 and I spend most of MY time on the water....I'm DOOMED!!!!!

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All work and no play make Homer something something

Hey xx,

I'm not so sure that the NTSB is totally correct in ruling out the south end as the start of the collapse. It sure looks suspicious. MDOT had sensors on the bridge, and the first ones to shut off were at that end. That end of the bridge had been reported to be "twisted" slightly and the pier had moved to the north in previous inspections.

If you read the inspection reports, the bridge was in very poor shape. The inspectors start every report with recommending the bridge be replaced.

Another interesting thing to come out today is the construction workers report that the they were removing concrete from the spans to replace. On the day of the collapse the bridge began to wobble, and the wobble was getting worse as they removed more cement...

In an independent report done by the University of Minnesota in 2001, they put strain gauges on the bridge and took measurements under load. They built a finite element model, and found that the readings were at 80% of failure in some areas. The model failed under some loads. After looking at the model they decided that the failure was due to the fact that they didn't have the concrete deck in the model, and that the deck actually added significant strength to the bridge.

Hmm, so the crew was taking out the concrete deck, it was rush hour, and there were 400,000 lbs of construction materials and equipment on the bridge...