Bridge collapse in Minnesota!!!

Watching it right now, never seen anything like it. Absolutely terrible. Boats are pulling people off sections stuck in the middle of the river, must have been one wild ride.

 

i just turned it on...this is terrible.

 

I can not get ahold of my Father or anyone in my family in MPLS. I hate waiting...

i have 5 sisters 1 brother several elder family that lives right there...

 

i hope everything is alright with them

 

Ahhhhhhh sh*t!! I hope you into contact with them soon JJ!! I hope they are all ok. This is terrible.

 

Thanks guys. No news yet. My father is flying back in today from a 6 week trip to Bellagio Italy. I just dont have his flight Details. No one is emailing me or calling me back yet so Im still waiting. Fingers Crossed.

 

My prayers go out to all those involved or affected, I hope everything is ok for FChatters and friends/relatives, and my condolences to those who lost loved ones.

James in Denver

 

I saw it on abc as a special report and I think its tragic, my thoughts and prayers go out to anybody and their family's who was involved.

 

Still no word. Its eating me up inside...


OK my family is ok... SHweeeeeeeeewww

 

My buddy just sent me this... I think someone is getting fired or worse...

"the really irritating thing is that some structual engineers last october deemed the bridge unstable due to fissures and cracks in the roadbed support girders... and they did nothing!"

 

they've been saying something along the lines of that the bridge would need a new top or something in 2020, but this just brings some whole new light to the situation. have you heard anything from your family yet?

 

I just flicked on MSNBC....wow, that is horrible. The women said it was bumper to bumper traffic, and that there was a schoolbus full of kids on the bridge. I wish for the best.

 

everyone on the schoolbus was fine, thank god. i was hearing the bridge was down to 1/2 lanes each way due to construction, whcih probably saved a lot of lives, however, and keep in mind, i'm no engineer, but i have a feeling the construction is what caused this disaster.

 

Everyone is accounted for. Its just typical of that part of the country. No one answers the phone when they are eating dinner and they check email about once a week.

 

i'm glad to hear everyone you know is alright, my thoughts and prayers are still with everyone else who has been affected by this.

 

+1

 

I have a feeling that we have more issues with more bridges that have been neglected. Watch them start shutting them down in other states. There was a report on TV a year or so ago about this problem. To those of you who have family and friends near the area I wish you well.

 

It is very, very sad that bureaucratic inaction can kill.

 

Glad to hear your family is ok JJ.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the other people that are directly involved with this accident......

 

Here is the info from my friend in MPLS>...

the official MNDOT report
http://www.lrrb.org/pdf/200110.pdf

http://www.visi.com/~jweeks/bridges/pages/ms16.html>

text from link:

? Structure ID: NBI: 9340.
? Location: River Mile 853.20.
? River Elevation: 725 Feet.
? Highway: I-35W.
? Daily Traffic Count: 140,000 (2002).
? Bridge Type: Steel Arch Deck Truss Bridge.
? Length: 1,907 Feet, 458 Foot Longest Span.
? Width: 8 Traffic Lanes, 108 Feet.
? Navigation Channel Width: 390 Feet.
? Height Above Water: 64 Feet.
? Date Built: Opened November 1967, Failed August 1, 2007.
Claim to fame: was built with a single 458 foot long steel arch to avoid putting any piers in the water to impede river navigation.
This bridge features an anti-ice system. A series of PVC pipes carries a deicer fluid to outlets that are drilled into the deck of the bridge. When the temperature for ice is right, the deicer fluid is pumped onto the bridge deck. This system has proven to be successful enough that it is being installed on other bridges in Minnesota.

The National Bridge Inventory contains a report on this bridge from 2003. It reports the following items:

Deck Condition: Fair.
Superstructure Condition: Poor.
Substructure Condition: Satisfactory.
Scour: Foundations determined to be stable.
Bridge Railings: Meets currently acceptable standards.
Structural Evaluation: Meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as-is.
Water Adequacy Evaluation: Superior to present desirable criteria.
Bridge Sufficiency Rating: 50%
A University of Minnesota Civil Engineer in a report to MN-DOT recently noted that this bridge is considered to be a non-redundant structure. That is, if any one member fails, the entire bridge can collapse. A key factor is that there are only four pylons holding up the arch. Any damage to any one pylon would be catastropic. The textbook example of a non-redundant bridge is the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River. It failed shortly before Christmas in 1967 resulting in 46 deaths. A single piece of hardware failed due to a tiny manufacturing defect. But that piece was non-redundant, and the entire bridge collapsed into the icy river. Today, bridge engineers design bridges so that any single piece of the bridge can fail without causing the entire bridge to collapse. It is tragic that the I-35W bridge was built a few years too early to benefit from that lesson.

 

I posted this in the Mn forum, but I didnt know this thread was here.

It is really terrible what has happened. I have many friends and family who either live on the campus of the U, or work in the area. My father uses that bridge every day at the same time, 6pm, and came home early yesterday. When I found out what had happened I realized what it means to be afraid. I have not heard anything bad as far as friends being on the bridge, but all family is accounted for.

As far as Mn goes, we are some of the greatest people arround. I work just off of 394 near 494(15mins away) and before I even knew what happened there were mass ammounts of emergency vehicles from all over were flying by. I know voulenteer fire fighters from Minnetonka(20mins away) who dropped what they were doing to go help. I still have not spoken with a friend who works on the minneapolis pd, but when I do I will give people details. We all need to thank those who saw it happen and ran to a VERY unsafe mess to help, they are heros.

Its hard to grasp something like this when It happens somewhere else, but when Its a bridge that you, your family,friends, and thousands of others use on a daily basis, it hits hard.

A very sad day for Mn.

 

+1

I'd bet that when the investigation is done that it will come down to exactly that.

 

Apparently the MSM(main stream media) is scrambling to cover up the transportation agency report showing cracks and bent girders dating back to '06.

Here's one Fox News story that disappeared about it:

At least six dead in Minnesota bridge collapse - FOX23 News
The Minnesota Department of Transportation said in a May 2006 report that inspectors saw fatigue cracks and bending of girders, according to the local ...
www.fox23.com/mostpopular/story.aspx?content_id=4d0bc414-b156-4272-a41f-3957b785 4a85

 

And you just have to know this will become a partisan congressional investigation, each side blaming the other.

Did I read it right, this thing had just a SINGLE backbone-like below roadway arch truss? My layman's amatuer engineering
spider-sense tingles at this idea...could it have been torsional loading that got it, maybe because they routed too many
vehicles to one side or the other during the construction?

4 dead so far is 4 too many, but if this comes out even in the mid 20's fatality count, that seems to me like a real miracle.

James