35W bridge in minneapolis collapses

  • Thread starter Greg Bernhardt
  • Start date
  • Tags
    Bridge
In summary, a bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota has collapsed, sending cars into the water, The Associated Press reports. The school bus that was stopped on the bridge before it collapsed reportedly had 60 children on board. There are currently 9 deaths, and 20 people are still missing. It's been ruled out that terrorism was involved.
  • #1
19,412
9,961
"A bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota has collapsed, sending cars into the water, The Associated Press reports" - CNN. Hope everyone here is ok! My sister and brother-in-law take it every day, but they phoned us ok.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #2
Good grief.

Do you have a link to the story?
 
  • #3
It's on cnn.com and every tv news station
 
  • #4
There's a little more at Yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/minnesota_bridge_collapse [Broken]

I hope no one was killed.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #5
Mallignamius said:
There's a little more at Yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/minnesota_bridge_collapse [Broken]

I hope no one was killed.

Reports of cars under the collapsed bridge, that doesn't look good
 
Last edited:
  • #6
Thats very shocking to see. Your right it dosen't look good for some, but was glad to hear the school bus made it.
 
  • #7
I have a friend in Minneapolis that takes that bridge.
 
  • #8
Yeah, I saw this on the news, I hope there aren't too many serious or fatal injuries. I wonder what caused it.
 
  • #9
Wow, those people were in their car and fell 64 feet into the water. Thats like driving into a brick wall at 100mph.

Thats a bad way to crash because the road literally fell from under the car. A car is not designed for that kind of an impact.
 
Last edited:
  • #10
"Recovery efforts have been halted because of darkness"

CNN says "Recovery efforts have been halted because of darkness". Are they serious? Night light at football games can make the whole field look like it was noon on a sunny day. It's my understanding that there might still be dead people in the water. Terrible tragedy.
 
  • #11
On the bbc, they were reporting 50 cars in the water -- there's sure to be people killed :frown:

Also, the story of a school bus, with 60 kids on board, which just stopped before/on the gap (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_6920000/newsid_6927100?redirect=6927160.stm&news=1&bbwm=1&bbram=1&nbwm=1&nbram=1&asb=1)

http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/4146/44034277bridgecollapse4ji4.jpg [Broken] http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/7104/44034283slope220apsl4.jpg [Broken]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6927113.stm (e2a: http://photos.denverpost.com/galleries/newsgallery.html#id=1351&num=1)

:frown:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #12
Said on the radio an hour ago that the death toll is 7. Looks like a lot of people survived the impact.
 
  • #13
They just mentioned 9 people were killed, and 20 people are still missing. They mentioned that the effort this morning has changed from one of rescue to one of corpse recovery.

They are saying that the death toll is expected to rise later on today.
 
  • #14
Are they suspecting terrorism? I mean, the bridge was given the OK about 3 years ago after an inspection. It just can't fall, right?
 
  • #15
No one mentioned an explosion before it collapsed, just that it suddenly gave way.

Terrorism has been ruled out, it said that just as I was typing this. :smile:
 
  • #16
Schrodinger's Dog said:
No one mentioned an explosion before it collapsed, just that it suddenly gave way.

Terrorism has been ruled out, it said that just as I was typing this. :smile:
When I first heard it on the radio this morning, it sounded like an earthquake -- the people were saying it started shaking then they went into free-fall.
 
  • #17
Earthquake? Minneapolis? The shaking was probably just the bridge giving away.
 
  • #18
According to the news reports the bridge was under repair at the time.
 
Last edited:
  • #19
cyrusabdollahi said:
Wow, those people were in their car and fell 64 feet into the water. Thats like driving into a brick wall at 100mph.
Just to put a little perspective on this, they could not have fallen at free fall velocities. It's a collapsing bridge, not a disappearing bridge.
 
  • #20
ranger said:
Earthquake? Minneapolis? The shaking was probably just the bridge giving away.
Yeah -- I don't know that part of the US very well (apart from the airport), but thought it stange.

Like you say, the bumps people were reporting were probably the bridge giving in stages.

bbc: why?
 
  • #21
BEFORE:
i35wmiss02.jpg
AFTER:
ekjl.jpg
Who knows what caused it... the bridge was undergoing resurfacing and other 'minor' construction. Not sure what that means, but it might have had something to do with it. A failure of just one of those truss connections could cause the whole thing to come down.

They said it was bumper to bumper traffic just before the collapse, but it was mostly small cars. Bridges are designed to carry fully loaded tractor trailers bumper to bumper which is considered the worst case loading. I don't think this was the highest load the bridge had seen in it's 40 year lifetime. It must have been either some kind of material failure (corrosion, fatigue) or something happened with the construction that was going on.

Lower maintenance is a big reason that a lot of bridges like this are made of concrete now instead of steel (see adjacent bridge).
 
  • #22
  • #23
That video on cnn's website is quite a mouthful to grasp. Its just unbelievable to see steel and concrete (?) in such a state.
 
  • #24
My friend in Minneapolis just wrote me, he had this to say.

They installed an automatic de-icing system a few years ago and that is corrosive material (no one mentioned this) and it's been quite hot, that could have placed unusual expansion stresses in the steel truss structure. The failure happened at one point and the rest of the collapse was cascade or chain reaction. It's clear it was on the west (south end) bank side and from my inexpert opinion looking at the wreckage from the TV videos, the down stream side failed first and the bridge torqued and collapsed.
 
  • #25
ranger said:
Are they suspecting terrorism? I mean, the bridge was given the OK about 3 years ago after an inspection. It just can't fall, right?

Sure it can, it just did. 3 Years ago is a LONG time ago. But they said on the news it was inspected last in 06, and probably its next inspection for 07 was coming around sometime soon. I am not sure where you heard 3 years ago from.

Whoever the engineer is that signed off on the bridge, its going to be his ass.
 
  • #26
DaveC426913 said:
Just to put a little perspective on this, they could not have fallen at free fall velocities. It's a collapsing bridge, not a disappearing bridge.
As we know from debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories, structural failure is generally an all-or nothing thing. When the structural members fail, the bridge would have essentially dropped in freefall. Even when the failure is buckling instead of breaking (this one probably had both), the ability of the members to hold up the weight/resist the fall drops by many orders of magnitude.
 
  • #27
ranger said:
Are they suspecting terrorism? I mean, the bridge was given the OK about 3 years ago after an inspection. It just can't fall, right?
Not a cheery throught, but this bridge was on a federal list of "structurally deficient" bridges...a long list:
He says investigators are sure to look into whether work crews or passing trains caused excessive vibrations on the steel-truss span, which was deemed "structurally deficient" on a federal list of bridges.

"A structurally deficient bridge might be one not adequate for the traffic it takes, but not necessarily dangerous," Burnett tells the paper. "But a lot of structurally deficient bridges are dangerous."

The feds have information about deficient bridges. So does the group that represents civil engineers. It says: As of 2005, 156,335 of the nation's 595,363 bridges, or 26.3%, were structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, as compared to 34.6% of all bridges in 1992.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/08/expert-points-t.html [Broken]
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #28
Schrodinger's Dog said:
Terrorism has been ruled out, it said that just as I was typing this. :smile:

Yeah, in a country of paranoia that's the first concern. :rolleyes:

It's insane though. The infracture issue is happening all over North America. No politician wants to take anything seriously, so maybe we will an INFRAC Concert like Earth and that 8 convert.
 
  • #29
I like how the newspeople are asking, "well, they were jackhammering near the bridge, do you think that might have been a cause?"

Just ONCE, Id like to see someone say, "No,...its your bullsh!t reporting that caused it to fall". They have animations of the bridge falling, actual footage. Probably a bridge falling expert to comment on it. Of course, "terrorism was ruled out". Really, you think so?

The people on the news are idiots. One guy on cnn.com was on the bridge and he was talking about it. The reporter said "wow, you're very calm, Id be panic stricken"...yeah were all a bunch of idiots that run around like our heads chopped off everytime something happens. GIVE ME A BREAK. Then he said "I guess that calm comes over you when you have a near death experience".
So the guy just looked at him, gave a little laugh and said "Yeahhh...I guess so".

<smacks myself in the forehead>

A damn bridge fell. Its not that hard to comprehend if you have a brain in your head. This kind of media hype gets under my skin.

[/rant]
 
Last edited:
  • #30
Crappy engineers, crappy maintenance.
 
  • #31
russ_watters said:
As we know from debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories, structural failure is generally an all-or nothing thing. When the structural members fail, the bridge would have essentially dropped in freefall. Even when the failure is buckling instead of breaking (this one probably had both), the ability of the members to hold up the weight/resist the fall drops by many orders of magnitude.

Isn't there any resistance from the connecting roads? I was just wondering if it would take slightly longer to begin a drop because of the steel beams (or stiffening girders?) running horizontally underneath, connected to the ends of the bridge and the anchorage blocks or abutments. If so, perhaps that would explain the "earthquake" descriptions, that the bridge has to pull away from the ends?
 
  • #32
cyrusabdollahi said:
...Probably a bridge falling expert to comment on it. ...[/rant]

They did have a bridge expert on the news this morning to explain what might have caused the collapse. He was a reporter's worst nightmare. The reporter had to keep pushing him for an answer to why the bridge fell.

The short version of his answer (stripped of the technical info incomprehensible to the average viewer) was, "How could anyone possibly know until they get a look at the bridge?"

You could see it in her eyes: "You have to know because some stage technician led you up here to a chair in front of me! Don't you realize you're killing me right here on the air?!" :rofl:
 
  • #33
This is nothing but more of the same, media hype. A bridge fell. Report it correctly. Tell me what happened, how many people died and then move on. Then follow up a month later with a report explaining why it fell. But when you have all day news programs with nothing to talk about, they report the same crap for 12 straight hours on how the bridge fell. Yes, there was a school bus on the bridge......and? So what? Did everyone in the bus die? No. :confused: Is this good news reporting? No.


Quick, make an animation of the bridge falling, because were too stupid to think in our minds how a bridge falls. They even put all the cars on the bridge (bus included) as it fell in the animation. I wish one day a news reporter asked me a question live on the air. I'd call him a moron to his face.
 
Last edited:
  • #34
cyrusabdollahi said:
This is nothing but more of the same, media hype. A bridge fell. Report it correctly. Tell me what happened, how many people died and then move on. Then follow up a month later with a report explaining why it fell. But when you have all day news programs with nothing to talk about, they report the same crap for 12 straight hours on how the bridge fell. Yes, there was a school bus on the bridge......and? So what? Did everyone in the bus die? No. :confused: Is this good news reporting? No.

Welcome to the 21st century, bro. Sensationalism in its most pure form ever.

cyrusabdollahi said:
Quick, make an animation of the bridge falling, because were too stupid to think in our minds how a bridge falls. They even put all the cars on the bridge (bus included) as it fell in the animation.

:rofl: :rofl:
 
<h2>1. What caused the collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis?</h2><p>The collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis was caused by a design flaw in the bridge's gusset plates, which are crucial for distributing the weight of the bridge. These plates were too thin and could not handle the stress of heavy traffic and construction work on the bridge.</p><h2>2. Were there any warning signs prior to the collapse?</h2><p>There were some warning signs of potential issues with the bridge, including rust and corrosion on the gusset plates. However, these signs were not properly addressed and were not considered a significant threat to the bridge's structural integrity.</p><h2>3. How many people were injured or killed in the collapse?</h2><p>The collapse of the 35W bridge resulted in 13 fatalities and 145 injuries. The victims included both drivers and passengers on the bridge, as well as construction workers who were working on the bridge at the time of the collapse.</p><h2>4. Has the bridge been repaired or replaced since the collapse?</h2><p>The 35W bridge has been completely replaced since the collapse. The new bridge was designed with improved safety measures, including thicker and stronger gusset plates, to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring in the future.</p><h2>5. What steps have been taken to prevent bridge collapses in the future?</h2><p>Since the collapse of the 35W bridge, there have been stricter regulations and inspections for bridges across the country. Bridge engineers are now required to conduct more thorough and frequent inspections, and any potential issues must be addressed promptly to ensure the safety of the public.</p>

1. What caused the collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis?

The collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis was caused by a design flaw in the bridge's gusset plates, which are crucial for distributing the weight of the bridge. These plates were too thin and could not handle the stress of heavy traffic and construction work on the bridge.

2. Were there any warning signs prior to the collapse?

There were some warning signs of potential issues with the bridge, including rust and corrosion on the gusset plates. However, these signs were not properly addressed and were not considered a significant threat to the bridge's structural integrity.

3. How many people were injured or killed in the collapse?

The collapse of the 35W bridge resulted in 13 fatalities and 145 injuries. The victims included both drivers and passengers on the bridge, as well as construction workers who were working on the bridge at the time of the collapse.

4. Has the bridge been repaired or replaced since the collapse?

The 35W bridge has been completely replaced since the collapse. The new bridge was designed with improved safety measures, including thicker and stronger gusset plates, to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring in the future.

5. What steps have been taken to prevent bridge collapses in the future?

Since the collapse of the 35W bridge, there have been stricter regulations and inspections for bridges across the country. Bridge engineers are now required to conduct more thorough and frequent inspections, and any potential issues must be addressed promptly to ensure the safety of the public.

Similar threads

  • General Engineering
Replies
9
Views
8K
  • General Discussion
Replies
2
Views
1K
  • Classical Physics
Replies
2
Views
7K
  • General Discussion
Replies
4
Views
1K
Replies
17
Views
7K
  • General Discussion
Replies
15
Views
3K
Replies
28
Views
7K
Replies
42
Views
6K
Replies
6
Views
3K
  • General Discussion
5
Replies
169
Views
12K
Back
Top