Bridge Collapse Investigation Begins
As search efforts continue, the body count is rising and more may be missing.
Aug. 3, 2007 — -- As the search for answers begins, the grim hunt for victims in the Minneapolis Interstate 35W bridge collapse continues this morning.
One more body was found Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed dead to five, with eight still missing.
"Several people who passed away are still in their vehicles," Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan said.
At least 20 cars and trucks are estimated to be entombed beneath the swirling waters of the Mississippi. Shifting currents and unstable shards of jagged steel and concrete make recovering them a risky task.
Until conditions improve, all divers can do is gather license plate numbers to match with the names of the missing, while on the surface investigators wait to recreate what went wrong.
The first clue is a surveillance video released by the Army Corps of Engineers.
"It will provide us with an opportunity much like a flight data recorder. We can use it as an investigative tool to determine where structural failure occurred," said Mark Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Structural engineers say the video suggests a fatigue crack. So in addition to looking for victims, divers scouring the bottom are treating each shattered part of the structure as a potential piece of this deadly puzzle.
Rosenker emphasized how thorough the investigation will be.
"We are looking at the bolts. We are going to be looking at the girders themselves. We are going to be looking at the rebar. We are going to be looking at the cement," he said.
It seemed unfathomable for a highway bridge to crumble and collapse under the weight of rush-hour traffic, but it may be more of a danger than previously thought.
Federal officials are now urging states to immediately inspect hundreds of bridges around the country, including some of the nation's busiest overpasses, used by millions of drivers every day.
A 2005 inspection by the Minnesota Department of Transportation branded the bridge "structurally deficient," a label Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty says doesn't mean that a bridge is necessarily unsafe or that it needs to be replaced.
But not everyone agrees.
"It will be determined that this was preventable," said Tim Galarnyk, CEO of the construction safety firm Construction Risk Management.
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