CNN reports major bridge collapse in Minnesota

[Brent]

The closest hospital apparently has 22 non-critical, 6 critical, and 1 death.

[Stephanie]

It looks like an earthquake hit and the bridge collapsed!

Those poor people!

[RL3AO]

The closest hospital apparently has 22 non-critical, 6 critical, and 1 death.

Yep. That is HCMC. There is the U of M hospital and a couple more on the north side.

[Brent]

Eyewitness says cars were bumper-to-bumper, defintely over 50 and maybe approaching 100.

[RL3AO]

8 lane road.

[gtalum]

8 lane road.

Only 4 lanes (2 in each direction) were being used due to the resurfacing going on.

[Chacor]

[Aquawind]

Pretty Freaky.. This is a major Interstate road right next to downtown. I use to bike under that bridge everyday and have driven it hundreds of times. It's a major fall to the water alright.

[Brent]

6 dead according to city officials.

[tropicana]

very shocking indeed.
The weather at the time of the bridge collapse at 6.05pm CT was quite hot, 91F... there are thunderstorms in the area currently and temperatures have fallen to around 75F.

-justin-

[Brent]

7 dead, 59 injured, reportedly "not everyone recovered from the scene", so the toll will likely go higher.

[JTD]

MN Governor Tim Pawlenty has called it a catastrophe of "historic proportions"

[Ptarmigan]

Sad. It's scary that we drive on bridges and suddenly it collapses on you.

[CajunMama]

Sad. It's scary that we drive on bridges and suddenly it collapses on you.

They were doing repairs to the bridge. I don't believe there have been that many bridge collapses but i have not searched for any numbers. You take a greater risk of something happening to you just getting in your car and driving to the store.

[artist]

From the sounds of what they were doing it would be unlikely that the repairs had anything to do with it. I heard it was just resurfacing being done. Tomorrow we should know more if that is true.

[Ptarmigan]

They were doing repairs to the bridge. I don't believe there have been that many bridge collapses but i have not searched for any numbers. You take a greater risk of something happening to you just getting in your car and driving to the store.

Other bridge collapses in the past happened because of a barge or ship hit it. Also, earthquakes and storm surge.

[tropicana]

just last year, a highway overpass collapsed near Montreal QC, killing 5 people... the question is who takes the blame for a bridge collapse?

here are exerpts from an article written when that overpass collasped on Saturday September 30, 2006

On Sept 30, 2006 a highway overpass collapsed in Laval, a suburb north of Montreal, causing five deaths and severely wounding four. This tragedy is the outcome of the continuous deterioration of the country’s (Canada's) infrastructure as a result of years of indifference and neglect on the part of the ruling elite.

A little after noon , a section of the Concorde overpass, about twenty metres long and three lanes wide, suddenly collapsed onto the Papineau highway, burying two vehicles and their five occupants.
Even if all of the circumstances surrounding the collapse are not yet known, the information already made public attests to criminal negligence on the part of the authorities.

More than an hour before the incident, drivers on the highway had contacted emergency services to notify them about blocks of concrete on the road below the overpass, and just a few minutes before the collapse, a driver had informed them that the bridge platform had fallen several centimeters, causing cars to drop those centimeters when they ascended onto the bridge.

Twenty minutes after the first call, a patrol from the Québec Ministry of Transport appeared at the overpass. (Such patrols are not trained for inspecting highway infrastructure and are responsible only for the retrieval of debris from the highways.) The patrol demanded an inspection as soon as possible, but was given the response that an inspector would show up only on Monday, two days later. A few minutes later, the overpass collapsed.

Government representatives quickly sought to evade any responsibility. As early as Sunday, Jean Charest, the Liberal Premier of Québec, declared that the collapse of the overpass was “inexplicable”.

A similar point of view was adopted by the official media.
The popular reaction was entirely different, characterized by outrage and indignation towards the authorities, as was attested by a hand-written sign left at the scene of the tragedy: “Victims of their incompetence.”

Shortly after the tragic events of Saturday, the Minister of Transport, Michel Després, maintained that almost 5000 structures in Québec like the Concorde overpass were regularly given a “deep” inspection and that the sums expended by his government on highway infrastructure had doubled over the course of three years.

What the Minister passed over in silence was that such a “deep” inspection of the Concorde overpass had been carried out only a year ago and had failed to detect any anomalies—a fact which puts a big question mark over the nature of the inspections so celebrated by Després.

In its most recent annual report, the Ministry of Transport itself admits that only one in two bridges in the province are in good condition. According to Ministry figures, only 58.7 percent of bridges were deemed in good condition during 2001-2. Three years earlier, the figure had been 54.8 percent. One hundred bridges were in an “alarming” state and 1 in 12 bridges were in a “terrible state”.

The goal of the public inquiry announced by Premier Charest is to evade the fundamental questions about the chronic under-financing of, and the indifference of the elite towards, the decline and degradation of infrastructure.
The tragic events of the weekend are the latest in a long series of failures of basic infrastructure in Quebec and across Canada.

Six years ago, the support beams of another Laval overpass, under construction, collapsed onto the road under them, killing one person. At that time, the authorities promised that all measures would be taken to assure the safety of the province’s highway network. This promise has obviously remained a dead letter.

-justin-

[lurkey]

This is from another board posted from someone in MN:

the bridge that collapsed is a steel design, where each part is reliant on the other for support. if one section starts to go, it's a snowball affect.

the bridge to the east, 3rd ave bridge, is about 100+ years old, and pure stone. they tried to demolish it a while back with dynamite, and it didn't budge. so they rebuilt it. they thought they were going to be ok with this "newer" bridge

Here is the "before" image from Google Earth.

Slideshow of pictures of the collapsed bridge

[CajunMama]

There was an interview with a gentleman on foxnews that said he saw a hole in the bridge when he went over it earlier. Said there was a sheriff blocking off the hole and that traffic was down to one lane by it.

[southerngale]

This is so horrible. My heart goes out to all the families involved. I just can't imagine. Prayers being said for all the victims and their families.
I have cousins who live there and travel that bridge often, but they happen to be in Texas right now. We couldn't reach them through their cell phone because all circuits were busy.







More pics

Just horrible!