August 7, 2007

• Bridge Out!

  Probably most people in the US have heard that the I35W bridge between Minneapolis and St. Paul collapsed a few days ago. It’s been a major national news event for many reasons. For one thing, for a major bridge collapse during rush hour, the casualty level has been surprisingly low. I really think that was partially due to the fact that it was rush hour and traffic was only moving about 10 miles per hour. That meant that many people were able to stop their cars and those that did did not cause major pile ups behind them. It also meant that the cars that went off the bridge did not go hurtling into space at 70 miles per hour or more. You definitely do not want to hit water that fast because the impact with water is very powerful. Many people from the surrounding neighborhood heard the bridge go down and came running to help, too, pulling people out of the water and giving assistance to people still on the bridge. The rescue effort started long before actual rescue vehicles arrived. I think the number of dead is still at 5 and the number of missing is declining. The last I heard, only 25 people were remained hospitalized and only 5 of them were critical. It’s a tragedy, but it could have been so much worse.

  There was construction going on on the bridge deck, so 2 lanes in each direction were closed. That meant that fewer than the normal number of cars were on the bridge at the time of the collapse. Much of the bridge fell straight down and fell in stages, which meant that people and cars rode down with it instead of falling off. There are cars under the bridge and a freight train was crushed under it. I don’t know if there are boats under the debris. That area of the Mississippi River is heavy with both commercial and recreational boat traffic. There are also bike and running trails along the shore. I would imagine that when workers begin to clear the debris, the casualty count will rise a little. The police and fire officials who have been coordinating the rescue/recovery operation are making a very intensive effort to locate all missing people, though, and it’s surprising how fast the unaccounted number has dropped. My husband and I have been expecting the death toll to rise as the cars under water have been searched, but that has not happened. We can be very grateful for that.

  Both of our kids work on the St. Paul side of the river and live on the Minneapolis side, so of course we wanted to know if they were safe as soon as we heard about the bridge collapse. Phone lines into the area were clogged with people trying to locate family and friends and it was impossible to make calls on land lines, but we were able to reach our daughter’s cell phone with one of our cell phones. She had driven over the bridge shortly before it went down, but she was safe and she had been over to her brother’s house and knew that they were all safe, so we were very relieved. I can’t imagine the horror that families felt when they could not reach members who might have been on the bridge!

  Workers will begin clearing the debris from the river in the next couple of days because they need to get the shipping channel back open. Divers continue to search for bodies, That’s a gruesome task made worse by the murky waters and debris. Right now, it’s hard to believe that in a relatively short time, there will be no trace of what happened.

  People are now wondering about other bridges in Minnesota and around the country. There are many with poorer safety ratings than the I35W bridge had. Hopefully, bridges in need of replacement or repair can be identified and appropriate measures can be taken to prevent another situation like this one.

  • 7:18 am
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