CNN seems to have the best coverage of the I-35W bridge collapse. It looks like the center section of the 40-year-old bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota broke away at both ends and dropped into the river.
Rescues are still continuing.
Updated to reflect a closer look at a better map with municipal boundaries after a comment.
Rook’s Rant is a former local and has family in the area. So far everyone’s fine.
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7 comments
Google link to Bridge prior to collapse:
[Edited to enclose link.]
CNN has another version of that map in their article, which is why I preferred their coverage.
Watching the News, and the comments from the witness the scene is so horrific.
As quoted:
“The bridge started shaking and then it collapsed”
“I was in my truck. I saw my truck torn into two I was wearing my seatbelt so I was safe.”
FWIW, I just checked, and Rook and his family are all OK. He has some interesting comments about the bridge, and says that Olbermann is wrong about pedestrians and bicyclists… they use a different bridge nearby.
Just an FYI, that bridge does not connect Minneapolis to St. Paul. That info is incorrect. It’s just a section of freeway flowing through Minneapolis
Once again, we have a major catastrophe in this country and where’s the federal government? Where is the national guard? This is not a local accident.
We should have decended on these poor souls within the hour. Has our entire country become so detached?
Nepalz, there was apparently no warning, an instantaneous failure. The steel supports look like they folded.
Yeah, Steve, I caught that on my swing by.
Thanks, Jon. The original map I looked at wasn’t clear on the boundaries, and I assumed that it was the river because the street names all changed.
Regina, it would take a minimum of a day if both the governor and the president could be located. The governor has to ask the president for a federal declaration before the federal government can get involved. The governor can call out the state’s National Guard troops on his/her own authority, but it would depend on where they are located as to how long it would take to respond.
This happened in a major metropolitan area, so there should have been fire department and police vehicles capable of responding quickly, but I doubt they had the equipment for something like this. They need the barge cranes that we have down in the Gulf and use to reset our bridges after hurricanes. If they were available, it would take a week or 10 days to move one from New Orleans to Minneapolis. Hopefully there’s some closer.