Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

its crazy to see this.... its personal pictures of what I am watching on the national news. So far away from me but it still hits close to home.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

:(

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

good luck to all you people who have to try to get around down there today!

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

From what MNDOT was saying it was only superficial repairs (cosmetic mainly) that were going on at the time. Nothing structural at that point.

Anybody know which construction company it was working on it? Most likely they are one of my customers.

Thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved. The families of those injured and killed, the workers and families and of course the rescue and recovery people on the scene having to deal with this kind of devistation.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

This never happens here in the midwest, only on the coast, my thoughts and prayers are out to everyone. My story with this bridge goes like this. I work at Westside VW during the day, i work at CD Warehouse Roseville at night. My commute consist of 394 to 94E to 35W to roseville. i'm on that bridge from 3:40 to 3:50 couple times a week. it that would have happened around the time i'm on there i would be in a totally different state of mind.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

I drove in to work this morning from Snelling and 36 down 280 and got off on Territorial. It was probably the fastest commute to work I've ever had. There were far fewer cars on the road as normal, easily less than half as many

36 goes down to 1 lane where the 35W North exit is, then merges with one lane from 35W South. 280 is a breeze with the traffic lights green and no turning happening there. They also closed off the entrances to the steel place right there so no semis can get in or out.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

I heard about it last night from my mom. It scarey to see that happen. This all over the news here also. In the galley today everyone on base was wacthing. I feel helpless. My prayers to familes

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At first my girlfriend told me it was the Rober St. Bridge and I was like "uhh I was just on there" and then I turned on the t.v. and heard it was the 35w bridge.
It's insane, words can't even explain what's going on in everyones head right now I'm sure.

May the lord take care of those who were unfortunate.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

i'm usualy on that bridge anywhere from 5:50 to 6:30 depending on traffic, but i generaly now days work from home so i'm good...

unfortunately for others tho ... pretty sad

-E

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Good Old Pres Bush was on TV talking about helping, but spent more time blaming the Democrats about being too slow with passing bills in congress. Yeah, like that made the bridge fall down. This is going to become a political subject now and it's a joke. Send more crews to double to triple up on finding people, cleaning up, and fixing the shit. Bridges out by us are going up in less that a year, they should be able to push this through and help people asap.

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IT IS SO SAD that politics use such an event to push their shameless agenda....

SHAME ON HIM!

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n/m

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he is such a puppet, so thats why its easy to hate on him.

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I'm glad I take the exit right before it since I work on Washington.... would have pissed me off if my Evo ended up in the river.

I'm glad the death count isn't higher (yet) it's really tragic. I hope everyone on here and everyone they know is ok, it's a damn shame it happened.

According to my architect friend, whenever you work on a bridge you close it. Taking pieces of the concrete out can either knock something loose on the supporting beams and or mess with the structural integrity since the 1 piece slabs are what help keep it stable.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

I think Dick Chaney shot the bridge, and that's why it fell.

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Thoughts and prayers go out to the family. I wish all the sideline engineers and theorists would shut the fuck up and think of the positives.

1)Traffic was low in physical count at that time.
2)Traffic wasn't moving along at 55mph, thankfully there WAS construction on the bridge to divert/clog traffic flow to other major routes.
3)The amount of civilians that responded was simply amazing. There are dozens upon dozens of reports of people in street clothes helping out rescue crews for up to the first hour of rescue operations.

Yes there was a construciton crew on it, yes they were doing resurfacing. Yes the bridge was found to be in "minimal operating standards", there were cracks, but no-one thought it was due for repairs until the year 2020.

Let the facts come out first before everyone starts theories, there will be plenty of time to debate about this accident (not incident) for the time to come. Lets just hope they find some of the remaining 20 missing people alive.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

Here's a very very very very good page filled with info about this whole thing:

http://pages.e-democracy.org/35W

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

It looks like from the video of this, the side that the train was moving under was the first side to go, the vibrations from the train moving could have resonated the bridge enough to stress the weakest points of the bridge.
mythbusters did a story about the resonate frequency of structures. They used a vibration exciter to bring down a building by using it at the resonate frequency of the structure. My theory is that the train just happened to resonate the bridge at its frequency.
Either way my thoughts and prayers to the familys of the people who are still missing.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

CNN.com actually has the security cam footage of the bridge falling. Pretty eerey stuff. One of our friends was driving under the bridge about 30 minutes before it fell and said that he had dodge chunks of cement that were on the ground. Hopefully they find the last worker alive. The company that was working on it is one of my customers and one of my co-workers is friends with one of the workers. We still hold out hope that there will be good news coming out of it.

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x2

And one of my Japanese friends in Okinawa just wrote me an email asking if I was ok. Apparently the whole world knows about our bridge now.

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Yea its top story on pretty much every news page. Its interesting to see that people getting blown up in iraq doesnt get much attention anymore.

I still think the whole thing is so surreal.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

EXACTLY dude.... exactly =(

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This person should contact the authorities, that is really messed up. I can't believe it was falling apart and no one noticed/said anything.

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Are you guys on crack? Because GWB didn't spend his entire regular morning speech on this, he's the asshole? It's big for us, but there's a lot more going on in America than just this. It's very sad, but the world doesn't stop when a tragedy happens. To make it the first part of his regular address is a very nice touch, and I thought his wording was right on the money. I don't really care about the rest of America's politics right now.

Sad as this is, I just wonder how the democrats will tie up all kinds of time trying to figure out who to blame for this. It's a sad thing, it happens, the best thing we can do is be more aware of it and proactively look at structures and keep them in decent shape. Blaming so and so is a waste of time.

Our prayers are with the those who are hurt or dead, and the missing 30 or so people who are probably gone as well.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

This is fucking great. I just found out that a bridge that I cross like 20 - 30 times a week in my work truck is in the same shape. Fucking HWY 23 bridge in downtown St. Cloud.

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No i was just upset that he had to sneak in the "oh they are slow" bit in with such an accident.
Out of respect for the accident he should not have done that. He should of just said a few things that they are working on getting and supporting the local government etc etc..

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You think this is going to cause traffic hell for a year. Try atleast 2. It will be atleast winter before they are even going to be able to think about rebuilding. Then they will have to wait until spring and even then it will take atleast a year knowing how fast the state does things.

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Yeah, but does your bridge have 100 cars sitting on it almost motionless for an hour at a time? I doubt if any others will collapse for decades, I think this was a very isolated incident.

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Still makes you wonder. And not for hrs at a time but a half hr easy.

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It is of the same design, but it doesn't have 141,000 cars going across it per day and it isn't a 458' span either. I don't think the other 3 bridges will have a problem any time soon.

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Same design similar condtion, yeah not quite as far.

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my thoughts and prayers go out to all of you. I saw this and immadietly thought of you guys, I hope everyones ok.

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

Just found out a close friend of mine was working on the resurfacing of the bridge when it fell. He was on one of the wheelbarrow buggies when it collapsed and was bounced up in the air and fell 60ft to the river. He was picked up by a boat quickly after hitting the water and made it through the ordeal with minor injuries.

His buddy was not so lucky. Jolly as they call him was in a Bobcat when it collapsed and is the only worker that is MIA. From what Jeff (my buddy) tells me he watched him slide off followed by a large slab which fell pretty much right on top of where he fell.

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Damn, that sucks. Not much can be said to make things feel better. We cna only hope that those who are found that didn't make it passed quickly and in no pain. We just need to hope they find more alive though.

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Wow, yea I dont know anyone that was impacted from it first hand. Brian, that is hard to hear, hope closure comes soon for those families still waiting to hear anything.

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The scary thing is his uncle was doing electrical work under the bridge with a crew but they quit working at 3pm that day.

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Did anyone here George doublya is coming to town tomorrow, mpls is going to be covered in feds, bullshit!

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Yeah, I'm not going anywhere near the city.

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Wow that sucks. Shit like that makes all of our little day to day problems absolutely insignificiant!!

Re: 35W Bridge just Collapsed
 

A coworker of mine is a navy seal trained diver and has spent the last couple days on site.

He had to pull him self out after fighting the current and debris, it was too dangerous. He said visibility is about a foot. On Wednesday he was under a part of the bridge trying to locate cars and the bridge would keep sinking down into the muck, he would suddenly feel the bridge on his back. Thursday the current was way to swift and dangerous to navigate in zero visibility conditions. He said the whole mess is just sinking more and more everyday into the muck, they will more than likely have to pull the bridge out of the water before they can safely get to most of the cars underwater. Today they found two bodies about 500 yards down from the collapse.

What a mess.

A friend of our family was on the collapse, his name is Jason. He was the dude who had the cut nose and no shirt on in the interviews.