35W Bridge just Collapsed

[BuildADSM]

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.

[gofastman]

Originally Posted by Outlaw1

Tragic.

My prayers go out to the families.

[runninW.O.T.]

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

[MATCHBX]

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.

[Bountang]

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.

[Matt D.]

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.

[98gstaherns]

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

[Bunta]

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.

[Enes]

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

[AJ]

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.

[Enes]

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

SHAME ON HIM!

[Kracka]

n/m

[Enes]

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

[DoughtCom]

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.

[scheides]

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

[niterydr]

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.

[scheides]

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

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

[tpunx99GSX]

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.

[MATCHBX]

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.

[Halon]

Originally Posted by niterydr

I wish all the sideline engineers and theorists would shut the fuck up

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.