Major (storm) Damage in St Louis, Missouri - buildings down

[silentknight]

Early reports:

Repost from other forum

folks, streaming of news coverage from damage in stl at kmov.com,

AmerenUE reports OVER 340,000 people out in metro St. Louis ALONE, 3 building collapses in the city, roof off parts of Lambert Airport, power out in one terminal, BUT the cardinals game is still on.

EDIT::: Debris from collapsed building on the Eads Bridge across the mississippi, Metrolink train service is DOWN, Mayor slay mentions this as one of the worst storms to hit the metro st. louis area in a long time.

[UPcrawfish]

Here's my .02 worth....
The MacArthur Bridge, downtown St. Louis has 2 railroad main tracks to cross the Mississippi River from East St. Louis to St. Louis. A Union Pacific train of 133 empty coal cars and 3 locomotives was stopped on top of the bridge on the north track. Rear end was in Illinois - head end was in Missouri. Straight line winds from the north came basically 'down the river' and blew over 42 of the 133 cars.

Now, these cars, when empty have what we call a "blow-over" speed. That is, if the winds reach certain criteria levels that equal or exceed the 'blow-over' speed of the cars.. we stop the trains... The 'blow-over' speed for this train was 70 mph.. The likelyhood that wind speeds reached or exceeded 70 mph is quite probable..

We will be re-railing cars off the bridge ALL day....

[Bush gal in LA]

Anybody live around the Creve Coeur area? Heard power was out yesterday. Does anybody know if it's back on yet?

[STL Teacher]

Hey guys:

If you want to get an idea of what the power situation in Saint Louis metro is, then go to www.AmerenUE.com and click on the left hand side where it says "Outages." On the next page, choose the Outage Map choice and look up the numbers it gives. Currently, there are still 480,000 households without power, translating to over a million people in the dark. The weather's better, so it's less of a hazard.

I'm still a little miffed about the lack of National coverage we've gotten here. But I'm pretty pleased that out city, though ranked as the 3rd most violent in America, hasn't had ANY looting reported. Take that, US News & World Reports!