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Minneapolis span collapses in river

VICTIMS At least six are dead, but officials expect the toll to rise.NO TERRORISM Authorities say there are no signs of a terrorist act.

Vehicles are scattered along the broken remains of the Interstate 35W bridge, which stretches between Minneapolis and St. Paul, after it collapsed into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour, sending vehicles, tons of concrete and twisted metal crashing into the water.
	[AP photo]

An interstate highway bridge in downtown Minneapolis loaded with rush-hour traffic dropped more than 60 feet into the Mississippi River Wednesday, sending at least 50 vehicles and passengers into the water below.

Local officials said there were at least six fatalities and expected the number to increase through the night. Dozens of injured drivers and passengers were taken to local hospitals.

"There were two lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper, at the point of the collapse. Those cars did go into the river," Minneapolis Police Lt. Amelia Huffman said. "At this point there is nothing to suggest that this was anything other than a structural collapse."

Mayor R.T. Rybak said at least six people were killed. There were no immediate reports on the total number of injured, but Dr. Joseph Clinton, emergency medical chief at Hennepin County Medical Center, said the hospital treated 28 injured people - including six who were in critical condition.

Other hospitals also were treating the injured. Clinton said at least one of the victims had drowned.

Amid the rescue efforts, the Minnesota State Patrol said at 7 p.m. that the cause of the bridge collapse remained undetermined.

The eight-lane Interstate 35 bridge, a major link between Minneapolis and St. Paul, was being repaired at the time, and a witness told MSNBC that he had heard a jackhammer being used on the roadway just before the collapse about 6 p.m. Witnesses said the bridge, built in 1967, collapsed south to north, in three sections, sending a plume of smoke into the sky.

"I've never seen anything like it in my life," said one witness, Joe Costello, who described the scene to CNN from a hillside nearby.

Divers and rescue boats continued to search the river and the twisted wreckage of the bridge, with darkness setting in and rain beginning to fall.

"It's obviously a catastrophe," said Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. "We want to make sure we can do all we can to help those in need.

"Our thoughts and prayers" are with the families of all the victims, he said.

"This is a very busy bridge," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., whose home is nearby. "It's really right in the heart of the city," Klobuchar told CNN. "Thousands of commuters use this bridge every day."

Many vehicles, including at least one semitractor trailer, were on fire. People were also reportedly floundering in the river. Rescuers rushed to help people escape cars trapped in the V where the bridge had caved in.

The crumpled wreckage of the bridge lay on the east bank of the river, and a huge section of concrete roadway lay on the west bank.

Down below in the river gorge, rescue workers scrambled to help people on the roadway that now lay in the gorge. Fire and black smoke rose from the wreckage.

Memorial Blood Centers and the American Red Cross put out immediate calls for blood donors.

Paul McCabe, FBI spokesman in Minneapolis, said the FBI responded to the collapsed bridge to offer assistance and conduct any investigation that proves necessary. But he said there was "no reason at this time to believe there's any nexus to terrorism."

An executive with the contractor, PCI, told the Star Tribune that, as of 7:30 p.m., one of its workers was unaccounted for.

'Like a movie'

Catherine Yankelevich, 29, was on the bridge when "it started shaking, cars started flying and I was falling and saw the water," she said.

Her car was in the river when she climbed out the driver's side window and swam to shore uninjured.

"It seemed like a movie. It was pretty scary," said Yankelevich, who is from California and survived the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

"I never expected anything like this to happen here," she said.

Berndt Toivonen, 51, of Minneapolis, was on his way home from a painting job when the bridge collapsed beneath his car.

"The bridge started to buckle," he said. "It went up and it came down. I thought I was gonna die."

He was uninjured, but he said people around him, some injured, were screaming in their cars as he went from vehicle to vehicle helping people out.

'Down, down, down'

Charles Flowers, 36, of Dewy Rose, Ga., was waiting at Metal Matic to pick up a load of tubing to haul to Mexico when he and several others felt the ground shake and ran from the building and saw the bridge had collapsed.

They scrambled down the riverbank where, Flowers said, he saw cars floating in the river, and injured, bleeding, dazed people asking for help. He said he pulled a woman he presumed dead from the water.

"I never thought I'd see anything like this," he said.

Four cars were submerged in the river upstream of the bridge and a rescue worker waded in the water searching for survivors. On the east bank, only a small section of the bridge support was still standing, and it was creaking as rescue workers carried out the injured.

Peter Siddons, a senior vice president at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, was heading north over the bridge toward his home in White Bear Lake, Minn., when he heard "crunching."

"I saw this rolling of the bridge," he said. "It kept collapsing, down, down, down until it got to me."

Siddons' car dropped with the bridge, and his car rolled into the car in front of him and stopped.

He got out of his car, jumped over the crevice between the highway lanes and crawled up the steeply tilted section of bridge to land, where he jumped to the ground.

"I thought I was dead," he said. "Honestly, I honestly did. I thought it was over."

Ramon Houge, of St. Paul, was on his way home from work and was on the bridge when he heard a rumbling noise and cars in front of him began to go down. He said cars that could backed up to a construction zone, and he was finally able to turn around and drive off the bridge.

"It didn't seem like it was real," he said.

A school bus, filled with 60 children, ages 5 to 17, was on the bridge when it collapsed, injuring at least two children and two adults seriously, according to one of the children.

Christine Swift's 10-year-old daughter, Kaleigh, was on the bus, returning from a field trip to Bunker Hills in suburban Blaine. She said her daughter called her about 6:10 p.m.

"She was screaming, 'The bridge collapsed,' " Swift said.

She said a police officer told her all the kids got off the bus safely.

Disabled man is saved

Marcelo Cruz, 26, of Crystal, Minn., who has used a wheelchair since being paralyzed in a shooting in South Carolina several years ago, was driving his van across the bridge toward downtown when he felt it began to wave up and down. He steered into the concrete railing to stop himself from driving into the river, and saw many cars on the bridge fall into the water.

His van came to rest steeply inclined toward the river and several onlookers ran and told him to get out. He said he needed help and the onlookers carried him out of his van in his wheelchair to safety on the riverbank.

"I'm lucky to be alive," he said over and over.

Gary Babineau, 24, of Blaine, Minn., was headed northbound on 35W when the bridge gave way.

"I can't believe I'm alive," he said. "I saw a couple of cars go down completely," he said. "It just totally collapsed."

"My truck got cut into two pieces," said Babineau, who was bleeding from his nose.

Jay Danz, 45, of St. Paul, was driving to a Twins baseball game and took W. River Parkway under the bridge just before it collapsed.

"I heard it creaking and making all sorts of noise it shouldn't make," he said. "And then the bridge just started to fall apart."

Danz said he was just 5 feet past the bridge when it collapsed behind him. Twisted green girders lay on the ground behind him.

There were cars behind him on River Parkway, but Danz said they were far enough behind that he didn't think they were under the bridge when it fell.

Dayna Wolfe, who lives near the Stone Arch Bridge, heard the collapse and came out on her bicycle to see what had happened.

Wolfe said the scene was worse than any of the many earthquakes she had survived in California.

"This is the kind of stuff you see with gigantic earthquakes," she said. "You don't see this kind of thing in Minnesota."

Information from the New York Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified August 2, 2007, 01:16:47]