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NTSB Use Accident Scene Mapping Team to Determine I-35W Minneapolis Bridge Failure
Jennifer Roy, Contributing Editor -- Design News, August 3, 2007
Check in with our I-35W bridge collapse coverage page for the latest news, videos and photos covering the failure.
Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board say it could take a year to figure out why the Interstate 35 bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, killing nine and injuring dozens of others.
The steel arch deck truss bridge, built in 1967, plummeted into the Mississippi River Wednesday.
NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker told the Associated Press the first step in the investigation is to recover pieces of the bridge and reassemble them “like a jigsaw puzzle.” They will also review video of the collapse and talk to witnesses, he says.
“It is clearly much too early in the initial stages of this investigation to have any idea what happened,” he says.
An NTSB spokesman told Design News the organization has an Accident Scene Mapping Team, which was immediately dispatched to the site.
Another spokesman, Ted Lopatkiewicz, refused to comment on the software used by the “Go Team,” citing time constraints and unfamiliarity with the programs.
In 2003, however, the NTSB announced it would use MapScenes Pro System, based in Las Vegas and Canada, for the investigation and mapping of serious accidents across the U.S.
Colin Parker, MapScene’s vice president of sales and marketing, says the company’s software is typically used by the NTSB and police departments. It surveys the scene, takes precise measurements and collects other evidence.
“Our software is really based on survey tools, so what a land surveyor would use. It is used to gather evidence at a scene and knows exactly what an accident scene looks like, what rested where,” he says.
Parker said officials work backward with the software to figure out what caused the accident being investigated.
“[MapScenes Pro System] might be used in [the collapse] to mark all the evidence points they have, where things came to a rest. You have a detailed map of where everything was, where the bridge split from the concrete,” he says. “They will, I imagine, be looking for all the pieces of metal that came to rest and how.”
Design News will continue to report on NTSB progress as the investigation continues.
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