Just happened- big 35W bridge that crosses the Mississippi River collapsed today- there were 100+ cars on the bridge when it crossed.... many cars landed in the river, some landed in the brush and onto the hillside of the Mississippi. There are tons of cars in the water and some are on fire... holy shit! I just crossed that bridge literally two days ago! :icon_eek:
I just saw that! Is that one of the bridges that was shown on Modern Marvels or whatever on the History channel?
pics? vid? Sounds crazy
Here are some pics.... hard to believe something like this happened :icon_eek:
More pics
Here are some more pics
I really hope my neighbor is ok- it's 1:15 AM right now and she still hasn't come home. She works right by where the bridge collapsed and thats about the time she gets off work.... I hope and pray she and all the others out there are ok.
I was hearing about this on the news this morning. What a rediculous thing to happen. Some engineer/group of engineers are about to lose their license. Man it's not like a chunk of it fell off, the whole damn thing fell down. I assume that other bridge is almost if not exactly the same.
Did you take those pics yourself? I've heard only 7 have been killed, still tragic but a streak of luck if that's all the life lost.
No, I didn't take the pics. I've heard that 4 people are confirmed dead now and 79 are injured in the hospital, 30 people have yet to be found.
On a good note, my neighbor did come home and she wasn't involved in any of this, so thats good anyway.
Not sure it was an engineering fault, since it was built in 1967, and carries an average of 139,000 cars per day...it just got old, and since they didn't mount any pillars and pyolns into the Mississippi River, so not to interupt the flow of the river (major barge area), it lacked a lifetime guarentee.
I was referring to the fact that there were several reports indicating the bridge was structurally deficient. I'm not blaming anyone, but it will soon have a scapegoat you can bet on that.
Quote from: R Dubya on August 02, 2007, 02:53:11 PM
I was referring to the fact that there were several reports indicating the bridge was structurally deficient. I'm not blaming anyone, but it will soon have a scapegoat you can bet on that.
I hate to say this, But I must...
ALL BRIDGES ACROSS NORTH AMERICA ARE UNSAFE if built befor 1993.
The reason I say this is because all bridges built befor then were built with certain bridge weight limits in mind. Then it all changed, but the bridges that were already built didnt. Trucks weighing in at close to 80k pounds, and often even more, when bridges were built to withstand only 20 or 30k. This is especially a problem across the midwest as this is where the Eisenhower interstate system started. 2 bridges colapsed yesterday, one in MN, and the other in CA (I beleive). They have had numerous bridge failures over the last 6 years (MN, NE, CA, KS, MO, IL, OK, OH, WI, LA, MS, AR, and more), and it will only escalate. It will escalate because the government wants to raise the weight limits inposed on trucks from a standard 80k, to 94k. If these bridges are already failing at 80k, what will 94k do? Especially when some bridges were only rated, when built, at 20k.
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