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Minnesota I-35W Bridge Collapse: A Reporter’s Perspective
Jennifer Roy and Amanda Mello, Contributing Editors -- Design News, August 8, 2007
Check in with our I-35W bridge collapse coverage page for the latest news, videos and photos covering the failure.
Karlee Weinmann was sitting at the kitchen table in her Minneapolis home when the I-35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River. The bridge came down, her home shook and then her phone rang.
“My managing editor called and asked if the bridge had collapsed and then I knew that was what it was,” she told Design News. “I grabbed my notebook and ran to the 10th Avenue bridge and started talking to people.”
Weinmann, the associate editor of The Minnesota Daily, said instinct immediately took over and it wasn’t until later the gravity of what happened hit.
“At first I was kicking into reporter mode. The first person I called was a photographer,” she said. Later, Weinmann called her mother to say she was OK.
“It’s a life-changing thing here,” she said. “It has changed the landscape of the city physically and emotionally.”
Dan Browning was supposed to be on the bridge when it collapsed at 6:05 p.m. – the height of rush hour – but had stayed late to cover for a co-worker.
Browning, a reporter for The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, said he had been in court all day and was writing a story about the sentencing of a convicted drug kingpin, when he looked out the window and saw flames shooting up from the bridge. Then, people started running in from the street to report the news.
G.R. Anderson, Jr., a senior writer for Minneapolis’ City Pages, said he was settling in to watch the Twins game when breaking news about the collapse came across his TV screen. He immediately called his ex-girlfriend to make sure her parents were OK, then ran to the site, where he watched people climbing out of the water and vehicles rolling into it.
“You could hear sirens, yelling, all sorts of things and it was really shocking because while you are in it you don’t have time to digest all that was going on,” he said.
Like Weinmann and Anderson, Browning said he hasn’t really thought about the fact he could have been among the dead or missing – he’s just been doing his job.
“It’s a big deal. It was one of the busiest bridges in the state,” he told Design News. “It was one of the major thoroughfares in and out of downtown.”
Officials have told Browning they want to have the bridge back in operation within 18 months and will add unspecified incentives into the construction contract for early completion.
“In any case, it’s a major headache,” Browning said. “It’s drawing attention from around the world, there’s no doubt about it.”
On Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board announced its “Go Team” divers are continuing to search for victims and other rescue crews have determined which vehicles can safely be removed from the wreckage.
The NTSB has been inspecting accessible areas on the north side of the bridge using high-resolution cameras and have observed several tensile fractures, but none that look like the source of the collapse, Chairman Mark V. Rosenker said in a press release Wednesday.
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