BIG News - Major bridge colapse in Mpls.!

[32DegH2O]

I drove over this bridge not more than 20 min. before it colapsed!...counting my lucky stars!!! It's a main freeway bridge on 35W located in downtown Mpls...by the Metrodome. The bridge was currently under construction to fix the bridge deck and some other things...this was most definitely not a terroristic attack! It happened around 6:00pm just during the last part of rush hour...so there were a lot of cars still going over it at the time...going to be a number of deaths. I'm sure it will be on National and all local news programs later tonight.

[The Bandit]

Glad you are ok

[la90043]

just saw the bridge.news. geez. appreciate every day of life.! thats amazing!

[Bernie]

Glad you made it .Thinking of the people who did not .Sad
Bernie

[ph2ocraft]

WOW what a mess, bumper to bumper traffic 9 dead already, glad you weren't one.

[FLjoyrider]

Do they know the cause of the bridge collapse yet?

[32DegH2O]

No not at the current time and it will probably be awhile to hear anything because the Feds are involved so I'm sure it will go through a major investigation which as everyone knows will take some time. My profession is in high rise building construction and I deal with structural stuff all the time...based on what I've heard from 2005 and 2006 bridge inspection reports (one saying that the bridge is deficient yet not in immediate danger - a 2005 inspection report). Another report stated visible signs of cracking in steel surface areas on girders and beams and some visible bending on struts under the bridge decking. What?...and no-one saw this coming? This was just a disaster waiting to happen! This is my theory of what happened. With the weakening structure, when they started to redo the bridge deck, they move all the traffic to one side as usual. Now you are loading the deck heavy to one side putting twisting loads on the structure. Now you start removing concrete from the other side making it even lighter which just puts even more unequal forces on the structure. This along with vibrations from traffic, jackhammering and trains going by, the combination of everything just caused the structure to reach it's strength limit and it gave way. By looking at footage of the bridge collapsing from a security camera near by...it sure seems to support my theory. But we'll just have to wait and hear what the experts say.

[FLjoyrider]

Sounds reasonable to me, also sounds like they didn't have maintenance on their list of priorities (don't know how long they have been working in it but the 2005 report doesnt sound good). We all know how important maintenance is. Anyway it gives me the chills when I think about, this definitely could have been prevented.

[Hydrotoys]

Prayers go out to the families!!!

This was totally avoidable.

[H2HO]

They should be ashamed of themselves to allow something like this to happen. Bridge collapsing and putting people in danger, here in the USA, is unacceptable. Those responsible should pay the consequences to the families of lost ones and anyone else that were hurt. They should also lose their licenses and jobs.

The Romans built bridges by hand and they are still standing through wars and millions of cars driving over them......give me a phukin break....this is bullshit....