I hope all of your MN friends are safe!

[maddythebeagle]

Bridge falls into Mississippi River - Yahoo! News

 

[Webzter]

So far so good. Very tragic and so far no updates on injuries / fatalities. Selfishly, as far as I know none of my friends or family were in harm's way. To be honest, I didn't even know about this until I got an email from friends in Washington asking if we were doing ok.

The local news has better coverage than what you linked:

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=261140

 

[dmpi]

I going to take a guess here and say the bridge looks like it was overloaded and collapsed. They might have made it heavier by all the construction plus all the car on it pushed it over the edge.

 

[GoodSense]

Safe here

As far as I know, nobody I know was injured, either.

What worries me is that a while ago a friend working for MnDOT said that several bridges were near capacity/in serious condition, but I don't remember this being one of them.

Certainly a good reminder to live one day at a time, and enjoy what we've got.

 

[haha]

MSN says 7 dead. I hope this is wrong. Looking at the destruction it is hard to imagine that there were not some deaths.

Wake up America! Our infrastructure is in real trouble.

Ha

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

infrastructure was one of my first thoughts when i heard of this but then they announced that the bridge was only 40 years old. so sure sounds like someone really screwed up.

 

[Webzter]

hard to say... 6 is sort of the end of our rush hour and people have been avoiding that route if possible. Basically, there was a lot less traffic on there than normal.

Construction was going on but it was supposed to be 'light maintenance' work.

There's only so many things you can attribute it to, though. Structural problem, someone f'd up on a repair, or sabotage.

 

[Dreamer]

Does Martha, Gregg or Cutthroat live there? I will feel better when we hear from them.

I was on a bridge where they were doing construction and it was down to 2 lanes. We were stopped and tractor trailers were going the other way. You could feel the bridge moving and I did not like it one bit. I am not fond on going over bridges or through tunnels anyway.

 

[Martha]

Everyone we know well is fine. Although the confirmed dead figure isn't high, there are still at least 20-30 missing, so the toll will go higher.

Still very much a mystery.

I have driven across that bridge many times without a thought.

 

[Dreamer]

Thanks for checking in Martha. You were the first person that I though of when I heard of the tragedy. Glad to hear that you are safe.

 

[haha]

Cutthroat and his family and friends are OK. There are lots of other Twin-Cities Folk here, but I don't remember who they are.

Ha

 

[Martha]

Spanky and Dantien immediately come to mind.

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

hi martha. was just watching the news and thinking of you. glad to see you logged on