Some of those drivers may have been able to escape. ::: crosses fingers:::
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting nine dead now. They have a very good photo slideshow as well.
This bridge was KNOWN to be dangerous.
The National Bridge Inventory contains a report on this bridge from 2003. It reports the following items:
Old bridge, bad design, poor condition. It was inevitable. The scary thing is there are hundreds of bridges like this around the country. Maybe if we didn’t spend so much on foreign adventures…
It is an absolute nightmare… I have driven on that bridge many times…
Happy, forty years is not considered old for a bridge. Think about when the interstates were built.
DtC, for some reason it’s easy to remember where you live and you were the first person I though of. Well, actually, the second. First was Garrison Keillor.
I’ve watched television for most of the time since they broke in on Hardball with the news. After it got dark, most of it was a repeat. After the initial horror, my thoughts went out to those who waited for word from their loved ones. I would have been frantic to hear. My heart was with you all.
I’m so sorry that this has happened to your city. It has such a pleasant reputation and judging from the Dopers, most of that is deserved. (nudge)
Long ago in a different job, I spent a lot of time in Minneapolis, and I’m quite familiar with that bridge. Like 9/11, this cuts me close because I’ve been in the Pentagon, and I know the section that was hit.
It was caught on a security camera.
(I had to click on the “having trouble viewing this video?” link)
Well, this bridge was obviously not holding up to it’s design lifespan. It’s design was fundamentally flawed, such a design would never be built today. It had received poor ratings on a number of inspections. And there are a hell of a lot of bridges out there in similar shape. In fact, a lot of the highway system is due for replacement as we speak. Happy motoring!
2nded on the niceness of folks in Minnesota. I was there a few years ago and had a wonderful time everywhere I went. As an aside, I probably went over the bridge. :eek:
I lived in Minneapolis for three years in the 1970’s and must have crossed that bridge about a thousand times, always amazed about how new it looked.
My heart goes out to everyone who suffered a loss in this tragedy.
Official Death Toll reduced to 4 (though unfortuinately it will go up)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRIDGE_COLLAPSE?SITE=WILAC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Wonder if the blood I donated July 18 (which does go to the cities) was/will be used for this disaster. (probably too old)
Brian
How long until everyone’s local news is saying,
. . .tonight at 11:00, our very own Katie Chadwick examines. . .Could It Happen Here?
Poor superstructure conditions are not terribly uncommon and do not necessarily indicate danger to the travelling public. Indeed, there are worse ratings than 4 (Poor). You have 3 (Serious), 2 (Critical), 1 (Imminent Failure, and 0 (Failed). There are thousands of bridges nationwide that have poor superstructure ratings that are crossed every day in safety.
No offense to the U of Minnesota engineer, but I’m quite confident that MN-DOT already knew the structure was non-redundant. That’s the nature of truss bridges, if either of the trusses fails, the other cannot possibly carry the load. In your garden-variety multi-stringer bridge, the loss of one stringer is not going to be catestrophic. For trusses, when any main member goes so does the whole bridge.
The morning shows in NYC have already done that segment.
How horrible. We also are very dependent on bridges to knit our city together and I can only imagine what it’s like to lose one in such a terrifying manner.
My prayers go out to the people of Minnesota this morning. You’ll find that most people are at their best when a tragedy like this strikes, which is some consolation.
Thanks for thinking of me. As Brainiac4 said, I’m out of town and just fine - we haven’t had EVERYONE check in yet, but its a big city (relatively) and - while this is tragic - the chances of knowing anyone directly involved are pretty slim, so we are hopeful that we won’t get any bad news.
The Brackett’s are fine; we were all south of the river (fortunately!).
According to the news, it’s going to cost >$122M to replace the bridge. And who knows how long?
The surreal moment for me is that this weekend is the Mississippi River Challenge; a 44-mile canoe run beginning about 11 miles north of the bridge. I was going to do it, but dropped out due to family commitments. We use the lock & dam visible in the pictures…
I get a kick out of the CNN reporters just digging like mad to find some deeper story than there really is and exaggerate all the deatails.
“It is THE major freeway that everyone takes to get from downtown to the suburbs.”
Not! It goes NE out of the city. There is also 94W that feeds the NW suburbs.
394 that feeds the West. 35W south that feeds the south. And 94E that goes to St. Paul and beyond. Plus dozens of other bridges and side streets (Hiawatha, Hennepin, 55, etc.)
And they all seem to be digging for someone to blame, as if someone knew the bridge was going to fail and there was a mass conspiracy and coverup :rolleyes:.
Some facts:
-It was built in 67’ and was considered to have a lifespan of 70 years.
-Inspections revealed it probably needed to be replaced before 2020.
-Inspections were difficult because the steel was painted (like a lot of other bridges) and hid possible cracks.
-Bridges like this aren’t built anymore not because they are structurally unsound but because of the domino effect. One section fails, the others fail.
-The repair work being done was surface work. i.e. the bridge itself is a steel truss structure, the concrete road lies/rests on top of it. The work being done was on the concrete road, not any any structural portion of the bridge.
-The load was actually less than typical since one of each lane in either direction was closed.
Already happened in Orlando(ish). 93% of Florida’s bridges pass inspection, none of the 7% are in central Florida, and the bridge over the St. John’s River was replaced only four years ago.
I have to give kudos to the Minnesota Twins…I heard on the radio they were going to cancel the game, until they realized that would dump an entire stadium’s worth of cars in the road, getting in the way of rescue workers. They kept playing for 10 innings. They lost, which under the circumstances, I can understand their minds not being on the game. 
Happy: From your cite : Substructure Condition: Satisfactory.
The superstructure, in this case, is the roadway/deck.
The substructure is what holds the thing up. Looks to me like the bridge recieved a pretty good rating for the substructure.
Like BobLibDem said, this rating system can be misunderstood. For example: many bridges in Mississippi are rated ‘sub-standard’ because the roadway width is narrower than today’s standard for highway bridges. Nothing wrong with the soundness of the structure, but rated ‘sub-standard’ because of safety.
Agree whole-heartedly. It’s as bad as those saying it ‘fell for no reason!’. Yeah, right. “failure by Magic Wand”. Suuuuuuuuuure.
We already had it happen here in 1980 so our local news has to keep reminding us of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge disaster. God, I hated that bridge even before it fell. Eventually, I had to drive the single remaining span and look over at the broken span dangling in mid-air. shudder Just when my bridge nightmares start to decrease …
But I’m sure they will soon start telling us how unsafe are the new Skyway, the Gandy, the Howard Frankland and the Courtney Campbell bridges. We gots lots of bridges here. For as long as I can remember the HF and the CC have been known as the Howard Frankenstein and the Courtney Crumble.
As for the question about the differences in casualties in bridge collapses, it’s going to have to do with a lot of factors. The distance the bridge falls for example. In the case of the Skyway , it was a 150 foot drop. People committed suicide from the top of that bridge for a reason, you could not survive the fall. Most of the cars that went over, went over after the span was broken. One vehicle went down with the span and landed on the bow of the ship and then bounced into the bay. The driver of that vehicle was the only survivor. Only 6 cars and a Greyhound bus went over but 35 people in those vehicles died. The storm that caused the accident was also responsible for the lightness of the traffic as people were either not driving the bridge or driving very slow, like the driver of the car that ended up stopped at the very edge of the broken span. I still shudder to think what the casualties would have been if both spans had been hit or traffic had been heavier.
Anyway, the I-35W bridge was a 60 foot drop and the bridge went down in sections carrying some of the cars with it so they did not bounce off. It seems that of those that bounced off into the water the impact wasn’t enough to kill them as many people were able to escape their cars and swim to safety. They said cars were piled on top of each other so maybe the first ones over weren’t so lucky. Also, visibility was good and traffic was slow giving some a chance to stop and escape, such as the school bus.
Well, I am not an engineer so I’m just rambling. I guess I have a morbid fascination for how these things happen because of my fear of bridges and the closeness of the Skyway bridge.
By the way, it took us 7 years to get a new Skyway bridge. Some are complaining that it was too fast because there are design flaws and they should have straightened out the canal more first to get rid of the dangerous curve that ships have to navigate. We did have the remaining span during that time which was extremely scary and single lane traffic in both directions. It swayed it severe weather and was closed if the winds were too high. The other alternative was an hour or more drive through Tampa. I took the longer route many times.
I would not be heartened by promises of a speedy replacement bridge, do it right not just fast.