This seems like it could be horrific.
The Interstate 35W Mississippi River bridge near University Avenue has collapsed into the river.
Both the northbound and southbound lanes of 35W are lying in the Mississippi River.
There are multiple cars in the river and a couple cars on fire. According to one witness, there was a school bus full of children on the bridge.
Cars are still on the bridge.
Tons of concrete have collapsed and people are injured. Survivors are being carried up the riverbank.
Yes. There’s pretty much panic up here.
Not to alarm anyone without reason, but this site is at the top of the Mississippi River. What if something was dropped into this water artery?
I doubt anything more serious than automotive fuel has gone into the water.
Never-the-less, it’s pretty bad.
3 confirmed dead by 7:51pm CDT, it will probably get quite a bit worse as the night goes on.
This “seems like” it “could be” horrific?
A highway bridge collapses into the Mississippi River at rush hour, and your not quite sure it it’s horrific or not?
“A highway bridge collapses into the Mississippi River at rush hour, and your not quite sure it it’s horrific or not?”
So far the death toll is very low. We may have dodged a bullet on this one.
I guess that all depends on one’s definition of “we”.
Here in Oklahoma, we suffered a similar collapse 5 years ago after a barge hit the I-40 bridge that spans the Arkansas river. I believe three people died in that collapse.
Has anyone determined the cause of this collapse yet?
“We may have dodged a bullet on this one.”
Further reports suggest a much higher death toll. Damn.
Has anyone determined the cause of this collapse yet?
Can you say crumbling and neglected infrastructure, boys and girls?
I think ya can.
How long before Debbie Schlussel and Atlas Shrugs point fingers at “teh moolsims!”?
It’s obviously Clinton’s fault. If he’d kept his penis in his pants, none of this would’ve ever happened.
I agree with Duros. Republican promises of low taxes may well have played a part. It’s very easy to punish a liberal pol who taxes and spends on infrastructure, very hard to punish a Giuliani-type rightwinger who lets infrastructure crumble, but then shows a take-charge attitude in the face of preventable deaths. Some lower-level heads roll, nothing changes, more steam pipes blow up in Manhattan more bridges fall down, more levees break, more Americans die. That’s Ronald Reagan’s most enduring legacy.
That should have been “then shows a take-charge attitude to disguise his own negligence after a preventable disaster.”
Wasn’t that HUGE transportation bill supposed to address a lot of this stuff? Besides Ted Steven’s bridge to nowhere, I mean.
What happened to Dr. Victor Davis Handjob?
Stupid computer remembered the wrong screen name. Ah well. Anyway, Rick Perlstein had a good post about this topic. In short, Bush’s tax cut meant less funds for local and state government. The Laffer Curve doesn’t mean much to people when their cities are falling apart.
“When Howard Dean ran for president, he said George Bush’s federal tax cuts were a mirage—that every dollar states and municipalities could not get from the federal government for essential services they would have to raise on their own. They would actually turn out to be a tax hike—if, that is, states and municipalities were able to summon the political will to raise taxes at all. Some have had a hard time doing that.
And now the bill is coming due. The ground is opening up beneath our feet, swallowing people and machines.”
This is a direct result of insane, selfish Republican policies of neglecting to fund necessary maintenance and repair while refusing to raise taxes on their wealthy supporters that would have funded infrastructure improvement. Republican ideology cost lives and, ultimately, cost more than simple repairs.
I saw an estimate that all the bridges could be fixed for about $9.5B. I think the Democrats proposed spending increase on SCHIP is much, much larger than that. It all gets back to priorities - not whether a particular program is good in isolation. And if the problem were so critical, why isn’t there a propoasl on the books from Dems? In fact, it is a state responsibility and while the Governor is R, the legislature is DFL.
Well, hell, dugger, one month’s cost in Iraq would pay for both of them.
And again, I thought that the huge transportation bill was supposed to cover stuff like this. Where’d all that federal money go?
I knew it wouldn’t take long before some jackass decided to blame this on tax cuts or conservatives in general.
Dr. Victor Davis Handjob: El Numero Uno Jackass
Some of you idiots are as predictable as snow at the North Pole.
You know, it seems to me that every time something like this happens, I see state highway crews looking at overpasses all over the place.
Then they go away and don’t come back.