You should have visited more. 
St. Anthony Falls is a bit upriver and is acknowledged as the north end of the navigable Mississippi. The river doesn’t start getting really big until it hooks up with the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling, and the I-35 bridge is big-ish because it straddles the river bluffs that resulted from glacial Lake Agassiz runoff.
I was on my way up to Brooklyn Center from Richfield when it came over the news. I think every emergency vehicle south of downtown Minneapolis passed me with their lights on. Same thing once I cleared the tunnel–ambulances, squads and even a couple of flat bed semis hauling dozers–all headed for the scene.
The pictures are on TV right now. It’s unbelievable. How in the hell did all of those sections all fail? I mean, the part of the bridge in the river isn’t as big a span as the rest of the bridge that came down. WTF?
Traffic is going to be real interesting for a while.
My family is all okay - we usually are not down that way, but one nephew is a painter and has been doing work at the U. He crossed the bridge around 5pm.
One friend was on the bridge - didn’t know it until we saw him on Fox9 walking behind a reporter.
Another friend is MPD - he told his wife not to expect him home for the next day or so.
Scary.
(And if you know of anyone at the Twins game, don’t expect them home any time soon)
Mayor Rybak was just on and is saying six confirmed deaths.
Oh, my god!
I was out with a friend and looked up at a tv and saw this. Holy shit. And for no fucking reason? At all? When I first saw the footage, I thought “well, I didn’t feel an earthquake.” So, this bridge just fell. Just because.
I saw someone in this thread mention a fear of bridges, and you think that you are being irrational when you think that something like this will happen…cuz, major highways don’t just collapse. Never.
Shit. I am freaked out.
ETA: Oh my god Diogenes. hug
KeithT and I are ok. Glad to hear the other Mpls Dopers are ok too.
Where’s all the outpouring of concern for me?
It’s funny looking at the pictures of the collapes. I used to live in the Seven Corners Apts. and the condo building across 35W, and looked out on that span all the time. It’s funny seeing my old homesteads on national news pics.
Just last week I was driving over this bridge with my girlfriend and her friend on our trip to the Twin Cities. Now it’s gone. Wow…crazy.
I had to take 94 to 280 to get home from a staff meeting in St. Louis Park tonight (which is where I was headed when I cheated death a few minutes before 6:00). My other usual commutes for my job are to Bloomington (for which I can take 35 E) and North Minny which I think I’ll still be able to get to on 35W.
Going to SLP is going to be a bitch, though. That’s a major artery we just lost and it’s going to take years to get it back on line.
If there’s a silver lining, though, mayybe this will help to fuck the Republican convention next year.
ETA, I’m glad your brother’s ok. We checked all our people as well (in between fielding clls from out of town relatives – me being on the bridge right before it collapsed is going to give them a great story to tell) and we’re all ok too.
Yikes. I just saw video of the collapse, with mangled cars. What an awful tragedy. 
Glad to hear my fellow Minnedopers are okay. Diogenes, that’s some scary shit. Thank goodness you’re all right.
Because as any civil engineer will tell you, we’ve been neglecting this nation’s infrastructure for a couple of decades now, and the only wonder is that things like this don’t happen more often.
I was out having dinner, when I glanced up at the TV in the place and saw the bridge footage. I couldn’t tell where it was, so I pulled out my cellphone (dining alone so it’s okay ;)) fired up the web browser, found out that it was in Minnesota and immediately headed over here to make sure everyone was okay. Glad to see that all the Dopers have come through okay, I hope that the same can be said of their loved ones.
I was walking under that bridge about a month ago. I was listing to the huge noises every vehicle made and looking at how far down it was from the road. I was thinking about how when I drove over it I barely paid attention to the fact I was way up there over the river. I imagined what it would be like if the whole thing came down. I didn’t need to wait long to find out.
I work at the U. The list of people I know who might have been on that bridge is obviously long. My wife was coming home from East bank with my son at the time. She thought about going that way, but decided to take side streets instead. She burst into tears when she got home and saw it on TV.
I think I might have to bike to work tomorrow. I would imagine University Ave. will be closed.
Glad to know that you’re OK, Diogenes. I just noticed your location is Roseville - that’s where my girlfriend and I stayed, at the Motel 6 on Frontage Road. Her friend works at Dunn Bros. coffee shop there. I thought it was a pretty nice little suburb, and the people there were super polite.
A friend of mine made the same observation. She said that a couple of weeks ago she decided to stop walking under the bridge on her way to work, instead taking a longer route because the jackhammering and everything from the construction unnerved her so much that she felt like the whole thing was going to come down on her.
That’s really close to where my wife works. She gets mochas there all the time. We should do another Minnesota Dopelunch sometime soon.
This is indeed amazing that it could happen in 2007…
I am so glad to hear that “everyone we know” is ok. Thanks everyone for posting!
Question for those who might know…how do 50 cars fall into the Mississippi, along with pieces of bridge, and only 6 people die (so far)? Are cars really that safe?
Damn. I went to grad school at the U of MN, looks like I took that route daily to get to the campus. I lived in the Lynnlake area of Minneapolis for a while, then moved to St. Louis Park.
That’s just such a major artery downtown, if you haven’t lived there you might not realize just how central it is.
Considering the traffic was apparently bumper-to-bumper plus there were construction workers on the bridge, to quote someone on the scene as interviewed by MSNBC, the low number of deaths is a “grim miracle.”
Me too, and so far as I know, all of mine as well.