USA bridge collaspe
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MINNEAPOLIS - Dennis and Jamie Winegar were driving across the Mississippi River, stuck in the late rush-hour traffic, when they felt the bridge beneath them start to shake. The visitors from Houston, Texas, were among the survivors of Wednesday's collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge near downtown Minneapolis.
Their car landed on top of a smaller car.
Jamie Winegar said she suddenly started hearing "boom, boom, boom and we were just dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping."
She said her nephew yelled, "'It's an earthquake!' and then we realized the bridge was collapsing."
Behind the wheel, Dennis Winegar fought to keep their rented Chrysler 300M under control.
"I slammed on my brakes and saw something in front of me disappear and then my car pointed straight down and we fell." He estimated they dropped about 50 feet.
Jamie Winegar said everyone around them got out of their cars and tried to help others off the bridge. "There were a bunch of people right around there helping everyone. Angels is what I call them."
Among the other vehicles caught on the ruined span as it came to rest was a school bus filled with children on their way back from a day of swimming. Ryan Watkins, one of the children, said the bus bounced twice and stopped, its front door wedged against a concrete traffic barrier. The children fled through the rear door.
Catherine Yankelevich tumbled into the Mississippi River. "Cars started flying and I was falling and saw the water," she said. She climbed out the driver's side window and swam to shore uninjured.
"It seemed like a movie, it was pretty scary," said Yankelevich. "I never expected anything like this to happen here."
Jacob Reynolds of Minneapolis, who had just returned from a family wedding out of town, was driving downtown and ready to get onto the freeway when he heard that the bridge had collapsed.
He said he's certified for disaster relief by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so he ran over to see if he could help. Emergency crews were already fighting the fires.
"I realized there was nothing I could do so I continued to take pictures," Reynolds said. "I realized I couldn't capture it on film. It couldn't fit it in the camera. Some things are meant only for the eyes." -
my condolences .
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It may take several days to figure out how many people died in Wednesday's collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis yesterday - the official toll still stands at four, but nobody expects it to stay there. Between 20 and 30 people are still missing, and while some of them may be lying in hospitals, unconscious and unidentified, plenty of cars are still submerged in the Mississippi River. Anyone trapped inside - and there are such people - are no longer alive. So recovery crews are picking their way carefully around the twisted steel and broken concrete that could shift without warning in the muddy current.
Investigators, meanwhile, from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and from a private firm of forensic engineers hired by the state of Minnesota, have already arrived to begin trying to figure out what happened. NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker told reporters Thursday evening that the agency plans to use a special risk-analysis software program that will allow investigators to study each functional element of the Minneapolis span. According to Rosenker, the program "can take away every element of the bridge in a computer model, until it falls down." The hope is that the virtual facsimile will help illuminate which component ultimately failed.
That might not be easy. Sometimes a bridge collapses for glaringly obvious reasons - being whacked by a barge, for example. That's what knocked down Florida's Sunshine Skyway bridge in 1980, killing 35 people, and the I-40 bridge near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, in 2002, killing 14, and a causeway in Louisiana in 1964, killing 14.
But in other cases - the Mianus River Bridge in Connecticut (three dead in 1983) or the Silver Bridge, spanning the Ohio River between Ohio and West Virginia (46 dead in 1967) - the cause is far more subtle. The former was triggered by metal fatigue in a single steel pin: when it finally failed, the loss of support transferred excess stress on other parts, which couldn't handle it, failing in turn. The latter was finally traced, again, to a single piece of metal, which had been forged with a tiny, unnoticed crack that weakened further with corrosion.
Corrosion may have played a role here as well: the Minneapolis bridge - what's known as a deck steel truss bridge - was a concrete roadway supported by gridwork of steel. "When you use both concrete and steel like this," says William Miller, an expert on bridge engineering at Temple University in Philadelphia, "there can be chemical reactions going on where these two very different substances meet. This is especially a problem in extreme climates where water can get into the cracks between supports, freeze and expand and cause a huge amount of damage." Beyond that, says Miller, "concrete is a very forgiving material, and so it can stand up to a lot of cracking and wear. Steel on the other hand, cannot." In a place like Minnesota, where road crews dump corrosive ice melter on roadways by the ton in winter, the problem is even worse.
But since civil engineers know all this, how come they didn't spot the weak points? It may well be that the real breaking point was hidden, or simply wasn't obvious under normal inspection. In fact, as everyone knows by now, the bridge was deemed "structurally deficient" starting in 1990. That didn't result in an emergency repair order, but rather an intention to replace the bridge by 2020 - not unusual, evidently, since the designation doesn't suggest imminent danger. According to Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, speaking Thursday afternoon at a press conference, there are no fewer 70,000 to 80,000 bridges in the U.S. in the same category; at least another 80,000 are considered "functionally obsolete," or not up to current design standards, another label that fails to testify to a structure's safety for travel.
It would be so expensive to fix hundreds of thousands of bridges, that it's just not going to happen. But these numbers highlight the problem of the nation's infrastructure. No word is likely to make taxpayers' eyes glaze over more quickly. As a result, officials at all levels of government tend to defer maintenance on bridges and roadways; the voters wouldn't stand for the required expenditures, estimated at more than $9 billion a year. They might, however, be willing to pay for more frequent and thorough inspections, which could distinguish the structurally deficient bridges in imminent danger of failure from those that aren't.
In Minnesota, Gov. Pawlenty announced an immediate emergency round of inspections of all of the state's bridges, starting with the three that have the same structure as the crumbled Minneapolis span.
"The country is behind on infrastructure, and improvements need to be made," Pawlenty told reporters. "Anyone who looks at the national picture or the national statistics and says we don't have problem would be naive." -
WASHINGTON - The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday people shouldn't fret about general bridge safety across the country, notwithstanding figures showing more than 70,000 are rated structurally deficient.
"I don't believe that they should be worried at all," NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said from the scene of the collapse this week of an interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis.
"Rules that have been put into place as a result of a recommendation that we made some 30 years ago have improved the conditions and the standards that in fact these things are being inspected on," he said. ""But with that said, as a result of this catastrophic disaster, we're going to be looking at the rules and finding out in fact if they should be tightened, made more stringent."
Concern about bridge safety has increased in the wake of that bridge span collapse in Minnesota, and figures show that repairing all bridges considered structurally deficient would take at least a generation and cost more than $188 billion. That works out to at least $9.4 billion a year over 20 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The bridges carry an average of more than 300 million vehicles a day.
"We actually have the collapse itself in total video for us, lasting approximately three seconds. We'll be able to use that as an investigative tool to give us an idea where the structural failure began," Rosenker said.
He said it's too early for officials to know if the accident could have been avoided. "They are built not to fall down. This is an anomaly and we're going to try to find out why this is an anomaly and prevent that anomaly from ever happening again" he said in an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" Friday.
It is unclear how many of the spans across America pose actual safety risks. Federal officials alerted the states late Thursday to immediately inspect all bridges similar to the Mississippi River span that collapsed.
In a separate cost estimate, the Federal Highway Administration has said addressing the backlog of needed bridge repairs would take at least $55 billion. That was five years ago, with expectations of more deficiencies to come.
It is money that Congress, the federal government and the states have so far been unable or unwilling to spend.
"We're not doing what the engineers are saying we need to be doing," said Gregory Cohen, president of the American Highway Users Alliance, an advocacy group representing a wide range of motorists.
"Unfortunately when you consistently underinvest in roads and bridges ... this is the dangerous consequence," Cohen said of Wednesday's deadly Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minneapolis. He said engineers have estimated $75 billion a year is needed just to keep highways and bridges from further deterioration, but that only around $60 billion a year is being provided.
At least 73,533 of 607,363 bridges in the nation, or about 12 percent, were classified as "structurally deficient," including some built as recently as the early 1990s, according to 2006 statistics from the Federal Highway Administration.
The federal government provides 80 percent of the money for construction, repair and maintenance of the so-called federal-aid highway system including Interstate highways and bridges. But states set priorities and handle construction and maintenance contracts.
A bridge is typically judged structurally deficient if heavy trucks are banned from it or there are other weight restrictions, if it needs immediate work to stay open or if it is closed. In any case, such a bridge is considered in need of considerable maintenance, rehabilitation or even replacement.
Congressional leaders say the number of bridges in need of repair is too high and the funding too low.
There is crumbling infrastructure all over the country, said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who heads the Senate panel that controls transportation spending, said the Bush administration has threatened vetoes when Democrats try to increase such spending.
White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel, accusing the Democrats of using the bridge collapse for partisan purposes, said Bush had increased funding for federal highways by about 30 percent during his administration. The president had threatened to veto legislation not over highway funding but because of billions of dollars in excess funding in other areas, Stanzel said.
Democrats were not alone in calling for more bridge funding.
"People think they're saving money by not investing in infrastructure, and the result is you have catastrophes like this," said Rep. Tom Petri, R-Wis., a member of the House transportation committee.
The federal government is now providing about $40 billion a year to improve and expand the nation's highways and bridges.
The main source of revenue for roads and bridges, the federal highway trust fund, is failing to keep up with spending demand. The 18.3 cents a gallon in federal taxes hasn't changed since 1993, and the demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles could affect fuel consumption.
Funding isn't the only issue getting attention after the Minnesota collapse.
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said in an interview with The Associated Press that she had asked her department's inspector general to evaluate the agency's overall bridge inspections.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, most bridges in the U.S. Highway Bridge Inventory — 83 percent — are inspected every two years. About 12 percent, those in bad shape, are inspected annually, and 5 percent, those in very good shape, every four years.
The Department of Transportation's inspector general last year criticized the Highway Administration's oversight of interstate bridges. The March 2006 report said investigators found incorrect or outdated maximum weight calculations and weight limit postings in the National Bridge Inventory and in states' bridge databases and said the problems could pose safety hazards. The Highway Administration agreed that improvements in its oversight of state bridge inspections and data were needed.
Incorrect load ratings could endanger bridges by allowing heavier vehicles to cross than should, and could affect whether a bridge is properly identified as structurally deficient in the first place, the inspector general said.
The audit didn't identify any Minnesota bridges or mention the state beyond noting that 3 percent of its bridges were structurally deficient, placing it at the low end among states. It said those bridges were crossed by an average of 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles a day, putting it 13th among the states.
An analysis of 2006 Federal Highway Administration data found that Minnesota bridges were generally in better shape than those in other states. Only about 6 percent of the state's 20,000 bridges were listed as being structurally deficient. In Oklahoma, nearly 27 percent of bridges were cited by the federal government as being structurally deficient, the highest percentage among the states.
Among counties with more than 100 bridges, the problem appears to be most significant in the Midwest. In Nemaha County in southeastern Nebraska, about 58 percent of 194 bridges are structurally deficient. More than 55 percent of neighboring Pawnee County's 188 bridges are in the same shape. Of the 10 worst-off counties with significant numbers of bridges, seven are in Oklahoma or Nebraska.
On the other end of the scale, at least 10 counties with a significant number of bridges have none that are structurally deficient, according to the latest government statistics. A half-dozen of those are in Texas.
Several governors on Wednesday ordered state transportation officials to inspect particular bridges or review their inspection procedures.
Beyond Minnesota, North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven said his state doesn't have any bridges similar to the Minneapolis bridge but he had asked state officials to review inspection procedures. Presidential hopeful and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson ordered an inspection of several steel-truss bridges in the state. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano directed state transportation officials to conduct a statewide review, starting with highly traveled bridges in urban areas. -
Sherry Engebretsen, 60, of Shoreview, was the director of marketing at Thrivent Financial in downtown Minneapolis. She was headed home from the office on Tuesday, cruising in her classic Mercedes 280, when the bridge collapsed.
"That was her dream car," said her husband, Ronald Engebretsen, 57. "She had just bought it."
Her husband said he does not know what compelled her to take a route across the bridge. It was a drive she normally avoided, he said, in part because she disliked the frequent construction delays on Interstate 35W.
He last spoke to her a little more than an hour before the collapse.
"It was one of those long, tough days, and she was looking forward to coming home," he said. "I told her I'd talk to her in a few minutes."
Engebretsen huddled with his family on Thursday, hours after his wife's death was announced. They gathered to pray and to remember a woman he described as blessed with creativity — and the gumption to back it up.
"She's a person of great conviction," great integrity, great honesty and great faith in her God," he said in a brief telephone interview.
Ronald's daughter Jessica was the last person to talk to her. The 18-year-old also described Sherry Engebretsen as a "wonderful mother."
"Nowadays, you hear a lot of stories about parents and kids not getting along," Jessica Engebretsen said. "But we always got along."
PATRICK HOLMES
Patrick Holmes, 36, of Mounds View, starred as a pitcher at Winona State University in the early 1990s, leading the team deep into a national tournament and earning all-conference honors his senior year.
Later in life, he became a man who embraced fatherhood with open arms.
"I know it sounds obvious but he was a truly wonderful husband," said his wife, Jennifer Holmes. "He gave a lot to his kids. He adored his kids. His kids adored him."
Patrick and Jennifer were high school sweethearts. They'd been married 12 years. They both enjoyed the transition to parenthood.
Holmes' love of sports seemed to rub off on his children, and he enjoyed it. He took pride in coaching his 6-year-old son's baseball and soccer teams, his wife said. They also have a 4-year-old daughter.
Holmes' former baseball coach remembered him as a consummate team player — a hard worker and an overachiever.
Holmes was headed home from his job as an exercise therapist at Northwestern Health Science University in Bloomington when the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed. He and his wife had last spoken in the morning, a routine and unremarkable conversation.
"Normal stuff," Jennifer Holmes said, her voice breaking.
She was still in disbelief on Thursday night.
"I don't know. I can't really put it into words," she said. "It's just sadness and more than that I'm sad for my kids."
ARTEMIO TRINIDAD-MENA
Artemio Trinidad-Mena, 29, lived in Minneapolis but was a Mexican citizen with a young family scattered across the two countries.
His widow, Abundia Martinez, told Radio Formula in a telephone interview that her husband was a vegetable salesman and that he was heading home at the time of the accident.
Martinez, who lives in Minneapolis with the couple's 2-month-old baby girl, said her husband arrived in the United States 10 years ago. She said she moved to Minneapolis from Mexico a year ago and that both were living in the Unites States illegally.
The couple has three other children, ages 11 to 2, living with relatives in their hometown of Ixcateopan de Cuauhtemoc, in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, Martinez said.
"We're asking for financial help mainly because my children are in Mexico and I have a little girl here and more importantly because we want to se my husband's body to Mexico," she said, sobbing.
At New York Plaza Produce, where Trinidad-Mena worked, friends and family gathered Thursday night to remember him.
Julio Alvarado recalled a man with an outsize personality and a cheery outlook.
"He was very happy, always looking at everything in just a positive, good way," he said.
Alvarado said Trinidad Mena left work around 5:30 Wednesday night.
He was driving a pickup truck, which apparently caught fire after the bridge collapsed.
JULIA BLACKHAWK
Julia Blackhawk, 32, of Savage, had two children — boys 8 and 9.
As busy as she was as a mother, she was also studying at the Aveda Institute, where she met her friend Liz Ewing.
"She was a sweet girl and everybody loved her," Ewing said.
Blackhawk was headed home to her children on Wednesday when she crossed the Interstate 35W bridge. Ewing said she talked to her right before she left for home.
"We said bye," she said through tears. "Have a good day." -
I hope that those in need are getting the help they deserve. i also offer my condolences.....
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How safe is Ben Sheares bridge
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="friedguest"][size=18] So where are those smart alex crybabies criticising the govt. wholesale when Nicholl Hgy collapsed? They blamed the govt for everything, so why are these crybabies so quiet when it can even happen in an advanced country like the US?[/size]
Singapore leaders have the habit of comparing with the worse examples to make themselves look good while avoiding comparing with the better or the best. Why don't they compare their wages to other advanced countries' leaders and presidents and only compare with such countries when there is a worse case to compare.
Nicol Highway collapsed due to BCD's negligence in not implementing the structure calculation checks introduced due to the earlier Hotel New World collapse. This is a serious oversight on the part of the minister in charge.
If after hotel new world commission of inquiry we still hear boast about our best brains in government then people only need to point out such negligence to prove our leaders wrong about their boast that is all.
So please do not start all the selective comparison again for it is not the sign of winner or champion to compare only with the worse. Try to compare our Nicol Highway structural design and checking with the better or best practices elsewhere including the better bridges in US or other less advanced countries where bridges have been well designed and constructed and not by selectively comparing with the worse or another one which happened to collapse.
This type of bias in governing the country probably explains why Singapore has always appeared good on the outside and when foreigners take a close look they would shunt us and avoid us even the PRs are not taking up citizenship once they know our type of superficial governance.
So government really has to learn what is true values and true excellence and stop all the external look-good presentations to avoid falling behind the really advanced first-world countries as posted. -
MINNEAPOLIS - More than 100 cars and trucks and a school bus crawling bumper-to-bumper on a bridge that suddenly crashed into the Mississippi River seemed like a recipe for a massive death count. But on Friday came what this city's fire chief called a miraculous turn of events: the prospect that relatively few lives were lost.
Divers still searched through the swirling, muddy currents for cars and bodies. However, the official death toll remained at five from Wednesday's collapse, and authorities cast doubt on an earlier estimate that as many as 30 people were missing. They said it could even be as few as eight.
Of the roughly 100 injured, 28 remain hospitalized, and only five were critical.
"We were surprised that we didn't have more people seriously injured and killed," Fire Chief Jim Clack told The Associated Press. "I think it was something of a miracle."
Clack cited a list of reasons: a bridge design that minimized falling debris, a quick response by rescue crews and the rush-hour crawl that gave vehicles little momentum to plunge into the river.
In addition, experts say the speed and depth of the water in the Mississippi River were much lower than normal on the day of the collapse — largely the result of a drought. That may have made it easier for people to escape the disaster.
"It's a horrible, tragic event. But it could have been a hell of a lot worse," said Kent Harries, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the University of Pittsburgh's School of Engineering.
Minnesota officials say they don't yet know how many cars were traveling the span during the collapse. But judging by the length of road, the lanes that were open, time of day and widely accepted traffic formulas, Northwestern University engineering professor Joseph Schofer estimated that between 100 and 150 vehicles were on the bridge.
Despite the low death toll, divers were still contending with a treacherous combination of sunken cars, broken cliffs of concrete and jagged rebar as they searched for bodies.
Firefighters pulled the fifth victim, the driver of a tractor-trailer that was engulfed in flames, from the wreckage late Thursday. Video of the burning rig — nose down in the crevasse between two broken concrete slabs — was among the most compelling images shown in the immediate aftermath of the collapse. The driver was identified as Paul Eickstadt, 51, of Mounds View.
Early in the day, authorities said as few as eight people were still missing. However, they cautioned later that number could rise, in part because there was no way to know how many victims were in the water. Some people without family in the area may not have been reported missing, said Police Lt. Amelia Huffman, a spokeswoman.
The missing included a 23-year-old pregnant woman and her 2-year-old daughter, who was in the back seat of the family's car when the bridge crumbled.
Sadiya Sahal, a 23-year-old immigrant from Somalia, called her family at 5:30 p.m. saying she was stuck in traffic, said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center. That was her last phone call. "Her husband is destroyed. He's in shock," Jamal said.
Authorities still do not know what caused the 6:05 p.m. collapse. Engineers had theories including heavy traffic and construction work that might have put an undue burden on the span. The bridge was deemed "structurally deficient" by the federal government as far back as 1990.
Minnesota transportation officials spent another day dealing with scrutiny arising from reports and inspections over the years that raised alarm about the bridge, including rust-eaten steel beams, missing bolts and cracks in the welding that held load-bearing parts together.
A consulting company that thoroughly examined the bridge noted that one possible fix — steel plating of fractures — carried a "relatively high cost," according to a January report. Transportation officials deny that cost pressures swayed their decisions.
President Bush was scheduled to visit Saturday, and first lady Laura Bush toured the scene Friday morning. She praised the rescuers who rushed to the bridge in the chaos after the collapse — a sentiment echoed by the fire chief in explaining why more people didn't die. Because the bridge was near the heart of downtown, several emergency crews and residents were close by.
"We could not have done it as firefighters alone. It took more people than we had. It was organized. It was pretty calm," Clack said.
Authorities and engineers were in agreement that the truss-style design of the bridge played a big role in saving lives. The steel that supported the bridge was below the structure — as opposed to above the span in more traditional bridge designs.
"I think that was a lifesaving feature," Schofer said. "They had this huge advantage. They weren't crushed by steel."
Even though the collapse occurred during rush hour, the heavy traffic was an advantage because the cars were almost stopped and didn't have much momentum, Clack said. Because of that, the collapse was less likely to hurl moving cars into the river.
"They didn't have forward velocity," he said, "so when the bridge fell, they went straight down."
While the entire span covers 1,907 feet, only 458 feet is directly over water, supported by giant pylons. The rest of the bridge rises over sloping banks and flood plains of the river channel.
The irregular slope of the riverbank on the south side of the bridge turned out to be a good thing. When that portion of bridge snapped at the middle, the support pylons held, and the roadway only had a short distance to fall until it was caught by a drop-off just before the river.
On the north side of the bridge, however, the bank slopes down in a steady angle to a broad tidal flat. As a result, when that portion of the bridge crumpled, there was nothing to catch it.
That was evident to Dr. John Hick, assistant medical director for emergency medical services at Hennepin County Medical Center, who noticed that injuries on the north end of the bridge were much more grave.
Another factor that may have limited the death toll is the behavior of the river itself.
Mark Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators were particularly interested in learning why a part of the bridge's southern span shifted as it collapsed. That was the only part of the bridge that shifted, and it could help pinpoint the cause.
Scott Bratten, who regulates locks and dams on the river for the local district of the Army Corps of Engineers, said that because of the drought in Minnesota, the water at the time of the collapse was flowing at just a third of its normal speed.
That may have made it easier for people in cars to escape them, and it almost certainly made it easier for rescuers to make their way into the water and help the dazed and injured.
"During the spring it's a raging torrent in there and it would be a very dangerous place," said Whitney Clark, executive director of Friends of the Mississippi River. "The low water I'm sure was a factor in not making currents very much of an issue. ... If this had happened during the spring snowmelt or something it would have been a much different situation." -
WASHINGTON - President Bush, who is still criticized for his administration's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina, says he will stand with Minnesota residents as they recover from this week's bridge collapse.
The president on Saturday is taking an aerial tour over the I-35W bridge, which buckled Wednesday and sent dozens of cars sliding into the Mississippi River. He will be briefed on recovery efforts and meet with families and victims of the disaster that killed at least five people and injured about 100 others.
"This is a difficult time for the community in Minneapolis, but the people there are decent and resilient, and they will get through these painful hours," Bush said in his Saturday radio address. "As they do, they know that all of America stands with them, and that we will do all we can to help them recover and rebuild."
First lady Laura Bush visited Minneapolis on Friday to survey the wreckage of the bridge as rescue workers continued to search for bodies in the river. "Unbelievable," she said as she stood on a hill beside the eight-lane span, which once carried 141,000 vehicles a day.
As rescue efforts continued, the House and Senate on Friday directed $250 million to rebuild the bridge. But another vote in the House is needed Saturday after the Senate amended the measure to switch the source for some of the money.
The legislation would waive the $100 million federal limit per state for emergency relief funds, but the money itself still needs to be appropriated by Congress in future legislation. The chairman of the House Transportation Committee, Minnesota Democrat Jim Oberstar, suggested more money might ultimately be needed.
Earlier this week, the federal government announced a $5 million grant to help remove tons of debris and reroute traffic from the major artery in and out of the city. And the White House said the president would support the necessary funding to get the span quickly rebuilt.
"This is just the beginning of the financial assistance we will make available to support the state in its recovery efforts," Bush said.
"In times of tragedy, our hearts ache for those who suffer, yet our hearts are also lifted by acts of courage and compassion," Bush said. "We saw those qualities in the residents of a nearby apartment building who rushed to the scene to offer their help. We saw them in the divers who fought the mighty currents of the Mississippi to reach victims. And we saw them in the firefighters who searched car to car for survivors."
Every time a disaster occurs in the United States, the Bush administration's reaction is compared with its slow response to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005.
In March, Bush visited survivors of tornadoes that ripped through Alabama and Georgia. In April, he offered words of hope at Virginia Tech after a gunman killed 32 people and committed suicide. In May, Bush went to Kansas after a tornado wiped out the tiny town of Greensburg -
Originally posted by robertteh:
And you are using such an unfortunate accident to hit the govt again. shame on you. i mean, give the victims some respect ok?
[b]
Singapore leaders have the habit of comparing with the worse examples to make themselves look good while avoiding comparing with the better or the best. Why don't they compare their wages to other advanced countries' leaders and presidents and only compare with such countries when there is a worse case to compare. -
The scuba divers would have a gruesome find
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Nope, I didn't use any incident to tackle government. He (another mad terror) did that precisely as I have said in the preceding post by comparing with worse bridges to excuse government of oversight in checking structural integrity of MRT shoring resulting in nicoll highway collapse.Originally posted by Mat Toro:And you are using such an unfortunate accident to hit the govt again. shame on you. i mean, give the victims some respect ok? -
MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 3 — As recovery divers moved from car to car in the murky waters of the Mississippi River on Friday, state officials across the country raced to inspect bridges that are similar to the steel-deck truss bridge that collapsed here, killing at least five people.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Workers continued recovery operations on Friday at the Interstate 35W bridge collapse. An uncertain number of people were still missing and presumed dead beneath the waters.
One bridge, in Missouri, was closed indefinitely as a precaution. Elsewhere, bridge inspectors were told to cancel their vacations to conduct the emergency inspections and, in some cases, also re-examine bridges with designs unlike the fallen Interstate 35W bridge.
In Washington, the inspector general for the federal Transportation Department was ordered to review the National Bridge Inspection Program, which oversees bridges across the country, including more than 70,000 that have been found to be structurally deficient. Among other things, investigators are to examine whether the necessary repairs are being made to the deficient bridges.
In addition to those confirmed dead in the bridge collapse here on Wednesday, an uncertain number of people — some authorities say the number would most likely be close to eight — were still considered missing and presumed dead beneath the waters. An additional 100 people were injured, more than 20 of them arriving at hospitals a day or two after the collapse, having only then felt the physical effects of their ordeals.
As devastating as the deaths and injuries have been for the city, some officials credited the much-criticized design of the bridge, at least in part, for preventing the likely death toll from being even worse on the crammed I-35W, a crucial downtown thoroughfare.
Because the bridge had structural supports beneath the road surface, vehicles were not pummeled by steel from above them when the bridge fell, as happens in some bridge collapses, said Jim Clack, this cityÂ’s fire chief.
Other factors, Chief Clack said, may have helped too: the bridge was so crowded during that evening’s rush hour that cars were barely moving, leading many of the cars to “almost ride the bridge down” as it suddenly dropped 60 feet, apparently preventing them from actually landing in the waters below.
“In a way, we were lucky,” Chief Clack said.
Still, many people, including some family members of those killed in the collapse, were questioning state officials’ handling of potential flaws in the bridge and said signs of trouble had been ignored. The bridge had been deemed “structurally deficient” in 1990, but it was not expected to be replaced until 2020.
As recently as this year, the safety of the bridge had clearly been a point of concern within the Minnesota Department of Transportation. A consulting company hired by the state to examine “fatigue cracking” in the deck truss suggested extra metal plating might be added in some areas; at the time of the collapse, the state had not installed such reinforcements.
The company, URS, had also offered other alternatives, including more examinations of the troubled areas, which the state pursued.
In an interview here, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, said the state had relied on the engineers and the experts as it made maintenance choices.
“They made a decision in this case that they thought was appropriate at the time, but now we have to ask the tough questions about whether that was a reasonable decision,” Mr. Pawlenty said. “I can assure you that we will get to the bottom of it.”
Few words, though, could bring comfort to the families of those still missing, who had begun to wonder when, if ever, their loved ones might be found, or to the families of those who died.
“Somebody should be charged with murder,” said Khaffak Ansari, ex-husband of Julia Blackhawk, who died in the bridge collapse. “We live in this superpower, and they tell us things are safe.”
President Bush was expected to fly to Minneapolis on Saturday. Laura Bush, the first lady, toured the area on Friday, meeting with volunteers and emergency workers.
National Transportation Safety Board officials continued their investigation into the cause of the collapse, focusing their attention on the southern part of the bridge which, they said, “seemed to behave differently” than the bridge’s other sections. While much of the bridge essentially fell in place, the southern section seemed to shift in an eastward direction about 50 feet, said Mark V. Rosenker, chairman of the safety board.
By Friday, divers had managed to locate at least a dozen submerged cars, despite treacherous conditions in the rushing waters, steeped with muck, metal and electrical wires. By nightfall, no bodies had been found inside cars; the body of the fifth victim, reported by the authorities on Friday, was recovered on the riverÂ’s edge on Thursday. The search was expected to continue for days. -
Minneapolis - It's a puzzle with twisted, mangled pieces, some jutting high into the air, others submerged under an eddying Mississippi River
To piece together exactly what caused last week's bridge collapse here that killed at least five people, investigators are turning to a new 3-D laser camera technology and enhancement of surveillance videos.
Starting Monday, a computer simulator will model failure after failure, as investigators hope to find a wreck scenario similar to the scene that is bringing thousands of Minnesotans to the riverbanks to quietly reflect and mourn.
Early clues are leading some outside analysts to cast initial suspicions on recent construction activity on the bridge, wear-and-tear cracks in the metal, or both. And politicians across the nation, responding to sudden safety doubts among the public, are ordering inspections of thousands of bridges.
But federal investigators stressed that they may not have definitive answers, or new safety recommendations, for months.
"This is a long, very long, but thorough procedure," said Mark Rosenker, head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). "To try to give a bit of perspective on this, we just completed within about a year the final report on the Big Dig [ceiling panel collapse in a Boston tunnel]."
Mr. Rosenker reported significant progress mapping the wreckage, an important step given the river currents and recovery operations altering the scene.
With eight people still believed to be missing, officials said divers are inspecting each submerged vehicle, braving murky waters that supply only a foot of visibility and the glacier-like creaks and moans of the destroyed bridge.
On a tour Saturday of the scene, President Bush lauded the bravery of those involved in rescue efforts: "We have an amazing country, where people's instinct, first instinct, is to help save life."
Throughout the weekend, residents trekked alongside a police perimeter and perched on grassy knolls near the defunct flour mills at the river's edge. Some brought flowers to cast; others, frustration, carrying "build bridges not bombs" placards.
"You can't put up infrastructure on the cheap, and if you are going to do that, something has got to give," says Eileen Johnson, who sells flowers in the city, echoing a common sentiment.
In its quest to pinpoint just what happened, and why, the NTSB got a boost from a 3-D laser scanner brought in by the FBI. The device sits on a tripod and shoots thousands of lasers to take a three-dimensional picture, replacing the tedious work once done one point at a time by surveyors.
"Because you have this mess of twisted metals, it would take you months to do point-by-point maps. This will allow us to do it in a day," says Mark Bagnard, an NTSB investigator.
Officials used the same sort of device after freeway collapse in Oakland, Calif. this past April to get highly accurate measurements of the road gap to be retrofitted.
Municipalities are buying these scanners with the help of Homeland Security funds to produce maps of potential soft targets, says Tony Grissim with Leica Geosystems. The Swiss company made the scanners used in the Oakland repairs. Its latest generation system, can measure with an accuracy of 6 millimeters from a distance of 50 meters, he says.
With the wreckage mostly mapped, the NTSB will move segments of the bridge by barge to a nearby field. There, a collection of pieces of particular interest will be laid out much like the agency's postcrash airplane reconstructions in hangars.
The next step, say engineering experts, is to make a computer model of the bridge (also known as finite element analysis), dividing it into 52 separate pieces, each critical to the bridge's stability. The more data the better: including original drawings, steel and concrete strengths, temperatures, and the pattern of traffic.
Then, like pulling the crucial block out of a Jenga tower, engineers will remove a piece to see how the bridge would fall. Each collapse scenario will be compared against the maps from the 3-D laser scanner, and the fortuitous video of the event.
Once a match is found, the focus turns to why that particular piece failed. Investigators will be on the lookout for indications that the metal had a slow-growing fatigue fracture, says Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
If such a fracture brought down the bridge, controversy over whether the bridge had been properly inspected and maintained may intensify. The head of the state transportation department on Friday angrily denied insinuations that the agency skimped on maintenance following inspections that revealed fatigue stresses.
One longtime bridge collapse expert says he doubts a fracture was the cause. "Brittle fracture problems generally occur in cold weather conditions," says John Hanson, a structural engineering consultant. "A defect of this size that didn't fail when it was 30 below zero would have had to grow [significantly] size since last winter."
Instead, Dr. Hanson says, he would first focus on the construction work that was being done on the deck when the bridge fell. He suspects that the deck, or concrete roadway, played a larger-than-intended role in making the bridge sturdy. Rosenker said in a press conference Sunday that employees of Progressive Contractors Inc. are being interviewed, noting that the company was experienced and had worked on the bridge before.
Mr. Astaneh-Asl also noted that jack-hammering and a heavy asphalt truck on the bridge could have played a role. A respected structural engineer, he shares some of the public frustration with the bridge inspection ratings.
"[Officials] are at such pains to say that 'structurally deficient‚' doesn't mean unsafe," he says. "We should really not have inspections using these terms ... [Just] tell me: Is the deterioration enough to cause someone to become injured or killed?" -
I wont be surprise that some of the missing people are actually fake.
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What about the Nicol Higway accident?