Posted on 08/01/2022 8:56:58 AM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo
Aug. 1, 2007 is a date Minnesotans won’t forget.
Thirteen people were killed and another 145 were injured when the Interstate 35W bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis suddenly collapsed during rush hour.
The incident garnered national attention and sparked conversation about road and bridge safety across the United States.
The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the collapse on gusset plates, which were half as thick as they should have been due to a flaw in the original design.
The new bridge opened to the public on Sept. 18, 2008, and a memorial for the victims was also built near where the bridge once stood.
Fifteen years after the collapse, we’re revisiting coverage of the day on 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS and KSTP.com.
Monday morning, Gov. Tim Walz called for Minnesotans to “recommit to investing in the future of our state’s infrastructure to ensure nothing like the I-35 bridge collapse ever happens in Minnesota again.”
(Excerpt) Read more at kstp.com ...
It was a racist bridge anyway............
I thought it was a combination of bird shit buildup and the gusset plates already being to the wrong thickness. The acid in the bird shit caused the thin plated to deteriorate faster
I know about the gusset issue.
Not up on my bird poop science.
The new bridge is very nice. It has even been used for volent BLM demonstrations.
This was the same crap the state leadership was saying back in 2007 after the bridge collapse. They make it sound like the root cause of the incident was a systemic neglect of our nation's highway and bridge infrastructure. They deliberately left out the part where the bridge was already undergoing major rehabilitation work by a contractor when it collapsed.
Yeah. Eventually, they ran out of fingers to point.
Yep.
The bridge was under construction. I crossed it several times just before it collapsed when construction equipment would cause frightful vibrations.
It was the single lane construction traffic that kept the death toll low. Might have been hundreds killed in normal rush hour traffic.
If you can believe the Weather Channel aired last night a one hour documentary on that collapse. It was blamed on construction at the time. And a delivery of materials piled in one vulnerable part of the structure, where the gussets plates were 1/2 the design thickness. Also of note were the lack of movement in rollers designed to carry freezing shifts in the structure.
Lots of issues. Throw in the added weight and vibration from the contractor on the bridge deck and you got a recipe fof disaster.
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