On the surface, Minneapolis's 35W bridge over the Mississippi River was a simple road. Driving along it, you'd think it was on the ground. It had no cables, no towers, no art. I rarely noticed the view. The exit lane for Hiawatha demanded too much attention with all the merging going on. There was only the road, a gray familiar path.
Its art lay below, in its airy perch. The deck floated 115 feet above the water. It's remarkable how people survived the fall.
It had a plain top. There's the sign for my exit lane.
On Tuesday I came across a man looking at the ghost-town traffic still caught on the north side. He had driven over the bridge not a day before its collapse. He turned to me and told me how it had wobbled, even then.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Monday,
Some workers said that the bridge had been wobbling unusually in the days before the collapse, according to Minneapolis police Sgt. Tim Hoeppner. With every layer of concrete that they removed, the bridge would wobble even more, they told him.When a bridge starts wobbling, best not to ignore it.
- A wobbly bridge - part 2
- A wobbly bridge - part 3
- A wobbly bridge - part 4
- A wobbly bridge - part 5
- A wobbly bridge - part 6
Credits: TimDan2 (photo #1)
Mordac (photo #2)
kj415 (photo #4, derivatives allowed, cropped by me)
puppethead (photos #3, #5-7
ibran (photo #8)
Version 1.1.1
