To all those affected by the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, my thoughts go out to you all!
Death toll dips to 4 in bridge collapse
By JON KRAWCZYNSKI, Associated Press Last updated: 8:42 a.m., Thursday, August 2, 2007
MINNEAPOLIS -- Authorities lowered the death toll from an interstate bridge collapse to four Thursday, but warned the final number could change as divers comb the twisted steel and chunks of concrete that crashed into the Mississippi River.
Police Lt. Amelia Huffman said: "This morning, the medical examiner's office only has four sets of remains." Initial reports of seven people killed were based on the best estimates authorities had Wednesday night, she said.
The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, was in the midst of being repaired and two lanes in each direction were closed when the bridge buckled during evening rush hour Wednesday. Crews planned to resume their cleanup and recovery work Thursday morning. Fire Chief Jim Clack said officials didn't expect to find any more survivors. More than 20 families gathered in a hotel ballroom early Thursday, waiting for word on loved ones who couldn't be located.
"I've never wanted to see my brother so much in my life," said Kristi Foster, who went to an information center set up at a Holiday Inn looking for her brother Kirk. She hadn't had contact with her brother or his girlfriend, Krystle Webb, since the previous night.
More than 60 people were injured and as many as 50 vehicles were in the river, many of their occupants having scrambled to shore. The collapse did not appear to be terrorism-related. Some injured people were carried up the riverbank, while emergency workers tended to others on the ground and some jumped into the water to look for survivors. Fire and black smoke rose from the wreckage.
Minneapolis Fire Chief Jim Clack said the death toll could rise. "We think there are several more vehicles in the river we can't see yet," he said Wednesday. Gov. Tim Pawlenty said the bridge was inspected by the Minnesota Department of Transportation in 2005 and 2006 and that no immediate structural problems were noted. "There were some minor things that needed attention," he said.
"They notified us from an engineering standpoint the deck might need to be rehabilitated or replaced in 2020 or beyond," Pawlenty said Wednesday.
The 40-year-old bridge was rated as "structurally deficient" two years ago and possibly in need of replacement, the Star Tribune reported. The newspaper said that rating was contained in the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory database.
"We've seen it, and we are very familiar with it," Jeanne Aamodt, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, said of the 2005 assessment of the bridge.
Aamodt noted that many other bridges around the country carry the same designation that the I-35W bridge received. She declined to say what the agency was going to do to address the deficiencies found in 2005.
Road crews were working on the bridge's joints, guardrails and lights this week, with lane closures overnight on Tuesday and Wednesday. The bridge was fitted in 2001 with a computerized anti-icing system that sprayed chemicals on the surface during winter weather, according to documents posted on the Minnesota Department of Transportation's Web site.
There were 18 construction workers on the bridge at the time of the collapse, said Tom Sloan, head of the bridge division for Progressive Contractors Inc., in St. Michael. One of the workers was unaccounted for. Sloan said his crew was placing concrete finish on the bridge for what he called a routine resurfacing project. "It was the final item on this phase of the project. Suddenly the bridge gave way," he said. Sloan said his workers described a horrific scene. "They said they basically rode the bridge down to the water. They were sliding into cars and cars were sliding into them," he said.
The entire span of Interstate 35W crumpled into the river below. Some injured people were carried up the riverbank, while emergency workers tended to others on the ground. A school bus had crossed the bridge before it collapsed. The bus did not go into the water, and broadcast reports indicated the children on the bus exited out the back door.
Christine Swift's 10-year-old daughter, Kaleigh, was on the bus, returning from a field trip to Bunker Hills in Blaine. She said her daughter called her about 6:10 p.m. "She was screaming, 'The bridge collapsed,'" Swift said. All the kids got off the bus safely, but about 10 of the children were injured, officials said.
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said he spoke with Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, and that both of them along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., will be flying to the Twin Cities early Thursday.
The collapsed bridge stood just blocks from the heart of Minneapolis, near tourist attractions like the new Guthrie Theater and the Stone Arch Bridge. As the steamy night progressed massive crowds of onlookers circulated in the area on foot or bicycle, some of them wearing Twins T-shirts and caps after departing Wednesday night's game at the nearby Metrodome early.
Thursday's game between the Twins and Kansas City Royals was called off, but the Twins decided to go ahead with Wednesday's rather than sending about 25,000 fans back out onto the congested highways. Inside the stadium, there was a moment of silence to honor victims.
The steel-arched bridge, which was built in 1967, rose about 64 feet above the river and stretched about 1,900 feet across the water. 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.
The river's depth at the bridge was not immediately available, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a channel depth of at least 9 feet in the Upper Mississippi from Minneapolis southward to allow for barge and other river traffic. The site is just downstream from the St. Anthony Falls locks and dams.
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Associated Press Writers Brian Bakst and Patrick Condon contributed to this report from Minneapolis; Martiga Lohn contributed to this report from St. Paul.
A very good read on what the country needs to do to improve its aging infastructure, something that needs to be looked at drastically.
Bridge collapse spotlights America's deferred maintenance
About one-quarter of America’s 577,000 bridges were rated deficient in 2004.
By Ron Scherer Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
The tragic rush-hour collapse in Minneapolis of the I-35W Bridge over the Mississippi River is again forcing a reexamination of the nation's approach to maintaining and inspecting critical infrastructure.
According to engineers, the nation is spending only about two-thirds as much as it should be to keep dams, levees, highways, and bridges safe. The situation is more urgent now because many such structures were designed 40 or 50 years ago, before Americans were driving weighty SUVs and truckers were lugging tandem loads.
It all adds up to a poor grade: The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation a D in 2005, the latest report available, after assessing 12 categories of infrastructure ranging from rails and roads to wastewater treatment and dams.
"One of America's great assets is its infrastructure, but if you don't invest it deteriorates," says Patrick Natale, executive director of ASCE.
Among scores of recent examples:
•Last month, a 100-year-old steam pipe erupted in midtown Manhattan, killing one man and causing millions of dollars in lost business.
•The inadequacies of levees in New Orleans became horrifyingly clear in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The city is still recovering.
•In 2003, the Silver Lake Dam in Michigan failed, causing $100 million in damage.
America's 577,000 bridges are of particular concern because they are subject to corrosion. According to the website of Nondestructive Testing (NDT), which advocates not damaging structures during testing, the average lifespan of a bridge is about 70 years. Bridges are inspected visually every two years. However, NDT notes, "it is not uncommon for a fisherman, canoeist, and other passerby to alert officials to major damage that may have occurred between inspections."
In the federal government's rating system, any bridge that scores less than 80 – on a scale of 1 to 100 – is in need of rehabilitation. A bridge scoring below 50 should undergo reconstruction under federal guidelines. In 2004, 26.7 percent of US bridges, urban and rural, were rated deficient, down from 27.5 percent in 2002, according to the US Department of Transportation (DOT).
Minnesota's record is far better, with only 12.2 percent of its bridges falling into the deficient or obsolete categories.
Federal officials were quick to point out that those designations don't mean the bridges are unsafe. "None of those ratings said there was any kind of danger," US Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said in Minneapolis on Thursday. The ratings are used to point out deficiencies or overhauls that need to be conducted in the future.
Most bridge collapses occur from an obvious cause: an earthquake or a barge running into bridge supports. On rare occasions, however, bridges have collapsed for less obvious reasons. In 1983 in Greenwich, Conn., the Mianus River Bridge collapsed, killing three people. A federal investigation blamed excessive accumulation of corrosion on a hangar pin, a key part of the bridge.
In the case of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation. Its investigators were also on the scene to begin to piece together what had caused the collapse.
"It is much too early in this investigation to know what happened," NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said Thursday. The first step is to reassemble the pieces of the bridge like a jigsaw puzzle to figure out what triggered the collapse, he said.
State inspection officials had inspected the bridge twice since the federal government rated the bridge "structurally deficient" but concluded the bridge was safe. State officials were in the process of completing a third inspection – interrupted because of construction on the bridge – when the bridge collapsed Wednesday afternoon at the height of rush hour. As many as 30 people were missing as of press time Thursday.
Concerns about the bridge go back at least six years. A 2001 report by the University of Minnesota, Department of Civil Engineering, stated, "Concern about fatigue cracking in the deck is heightened by a lack of redundancy in the main truss system. Only two planes of the main trusses support the eight lanes of traffic. The truss is determinate and the joints are theoretically pinned. Therefore, if one member were severed by a fatigue crack, that plane of the main truss would, theoretically, collapse."
This was a steel, arch-truss style bridge with a concrete deck that should have lasted at least 60 years, says P.K. Basu, a civil engineer at Vanderbilt University and an expert on bridge design and failure. Corrosion of rivet connections is a suspect, as are possible cracks around such joints. Some signs of structural failure due to corrosion are subtle, he says, and may only be discernible by experts. Increased weight of trucks in recent years could be another factor. The bridge was part of Interstate 35, a major transportation link for Minneapolis, and one of the most heavily traveled urban highways in the country. It was also the first of its size in the US to be equipped with an anti-icing system that sprayed a de-icing element on the bridge deck.
President Bush on Thursday promised the federal government would respond "robustly" to help with rescue and recovery and with rebuilding the bridge "as quickly as possible." He also blamed Congress for failing to pass crucial spending bills, including funding for infrastructure.
Rep. Jim Oberstar (D) of Minnesota, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said Thursday he would ask for $250 million in emergency funding for Minnesota. Some will be used for alternative ways to move 140,000 vehicles a day that used to cross the bridge. Congress had authorized $283 billion for upgrading the nation's infrastructure over five years. Mr. Natale says ASCE felt the figure should have been $360 billion.
Staff Writer Mark Clayton contributed to this report.
