Major Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota... Many Injuries/Deaths Feared

IF this were terrorism, the government would be MORE than happy

to say so. So for all of you screaming terrorism, think again.

Oops...
God bless those guies~

Originally posted by dgtempe
IF this were terrorism, the government would be MORE than happy

to say so. So for all of you screaming terrorism, think again.

Another angle,

If this is the fault of Minnesota state, ie MDOT? (called VDOT where I am from), Inspectors etc... laying the blame on the government....

...how much easier would it be to blame terrorism and remove the scrutiny from the Minnesota government?

A convenient deflection IMO.....

We will have to wait and see....

Terrible tradgedy

Its a steel truss frame bridge.

It works on the same basic principle as a stack of cards, insofar as each structural member relies on the other to distribute the weight evenly to the support foundations.

If one of those trusses fails, either through overload, shearing forces or metal fatigue its entirely possible that the whole thing can collapse, because the weight distribution would suddenly become uneven, and the forces on the surrounding members will go up. They may have been within safety tolerances before the affected member broke, but after that any microfractures, fatigues etc would be amplified and its probable that they would start to fail in a cascade effect.

The "plumes" seen are, I would wager, concrete being blown off the reinforcement bars in the bridge deck itself as they came under tension. I'm not sure from the photo's if there were any pre-stressed elements on the bridge deck but I can tell you from personal experience that a pre-stressed element suffering a failure produces a hugely loud "crack/bang" noise as the tension forces let go, this, and the systematic popping of the rivets and bolted joints would explain the "roar" heard if a number of members failed in unison, as would be consistent with the support structure failing underneath them.

As for causes - well I'm speculating here but its out of 20 years experience in Civil Engineering - its possible that during the maintenance works and lane restrictions that a harmonic built up on part of the bridge the traffic was passing over - it wouldn't be enough to cause a failure in the steelwork normally but the loading on the deck would be more concentrated over one spot rather than distributed. This would induce extra stresses in fatigued pieces as they dealt with more lateral loading.

Too much induced stress on one spot, and theres potential for failure.

I'm not sure of the construction/traffic standards in the US, but I would have thought it prudent to contraflow traffic over a bridge like this to keep as even a load spread as possible.

Terrible terrible accident if its gone down that way

Originally posted by JacKatMtn


If this is the fault of Minnesota state, ie MDOT? (called VDOT where I am from), Inspectors etc... laying the blame on the government....

...how much easier would it be to blame terrorism and remove the scrutiny from the Minnesota government?

A convenient deflection IMO.....

We will have to wait and see....

I can see your point.
I guess we will just have to see.
Good point.

Maybe we could look at what else is going on in the world. What headlines are being avoided today? Perfect time for scandalous activities in Washington to go unnoticed. I might just be paranoid, but I didn't scream terrorist or accident. I thought "WHATS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION UP TO TODAY?"

Which makes me kinda sad, cuz more than likely this was a freak accident and there is no conspiracy behind it at all. How do we know though? With all that has happened in the past, this is now the first thing I think of. YIKES.

My heart and thoughts goes out to all those involved or affected by this terrible accident.

I live close to Toronto and we are approaching the same possibility with parts of the Gardiner Expressway. Rated to fail in the upcomming future, and no one does a damn thing about it.

The official death toll has been lowered to 4 at this time. Nobody knows exactly what made it change, but, it has been lowered for now. Some good news, I guess. Unfortunately they're expecting it to go back up as the day passes.

They are about to talk about it on Foxnews but they just said believe it or not, a small bridge collapses every week in America. Its not as uncommon as thought and bridges arent as safe as thought.

For all those thinking terrorism, believe me, the gov't would most readily admit that if it were the case.

Just watched footage of the moment the bridge collapsed, very dramatic on the BBC News 24, ... My thoughts are with those who have died or have been injured. What a Disaster.....

Same as everyone else, my thoughts are with anyone caught up in this.

Police say they are treating this as a crime scene, i guess that is the norm until the exact facts are clear.

I must say i was quite impressed that security camera footage of the bridge collapse was released so quickly, maybe the Pentagon should use these cameras

I would have thought that cctv tapes would be looked at by the police first in a crime scene?

CX.

I'm pretty sure CNN stated that the only reason why they have footage is because a person had leaked it to them. I'm guessing that was the best decision to make, in fear of it being confiscated by FBI or other organizations and never getting it back. The guy obviously wanted to stay anonymous and for good reason.

Here's the video I captured from CNN earlier this morning. It shows the CCTV footage of the collapse, plus has some statements in it that could be conspiracy theory fodder!

Thanks for posting it! Now people won't have to deal with the stupid commercials at the start of each online CNN video. I just heard recently that recovery efforts could take FIVE days if not longer. That's a pretty long time. I mean, they're still reporting 20 to 30 people missing. They're also reporting that in total there are still 30-50 vehicles in the water.

Just caught those so I thought I'd inform if you're not interested in watching the networks.

If the Govt of the day had put more money into infrastructure rather than defense budget/ military spending, perhaps this could have been avoided?

Either way, it is probably too early to say, but if it is a construction/engineering issue, I wouldn't want to be the Contractor.

What a terrible tragedy. I listened to the news and a young man was being interviewed and he said, he was talking to his GF on the phone and she said 'the bridge is collapsing and I have to go, call you back' and she is one that is still unaccounted for. Just so sad.

We had more people die here in Houston in a small building fire and where was all the sensationalism? They were playing the song from Platoon while showing pictures of the bridge as the Today Show began this morning. It made me want to puke.

Wow, wouldn't you know it, another bit of "failing infrastructure"!

Peace

And let me say something else, there was documented concern in this case just as the levees in New Orleans. One could say that the targets present themselves with built in excuses.

There was also "work" being done on the bridge at the time. That's a real surprise.

Peace

Horrible tragedy.....

Originally posted by Dr Love
We had more people die here in Houston in a small building fire and where was all the sensationalism?

Probably has something to do with the fact that fires happen every day while major bridges collapsing into one of the longest rivers in the world don't....

Originally posted by djohnsto77plus has some statements in it that could be conspiracy theory fodder!

You mean when the news anchor says:

It almost looks like an implosion, a deliberate implosion.

People will be looking for the squibs in that video for years to come I'm sure. I guess when 100 ton objects fail their supposed to fall slowly. Only demolition teams can use gravity to let things fall at full speed I suppose.

You might be suprised to learn that there are over 75,000 bridges in the United States that are categorized as structurally deficient by the U.S. Department of Transportation and a whopping 79,000 are labeled as functionally obsolete. There's no conspiracy. Just a lack of money to fix them all.

[edit on 2-8-2007 by dbates]

The bridge was inspected in May of 2006 and the report was that there were fractures along the tresses? In any case this may be what caused the complete collapse of 2000 feet of bridge.

Today it's a recovery effort of about 20 missing people. The reroute and detours are as you can imagine just horrible and people are being very selfish even in this hour by driving around barracades trying to get to work.