The Fall and Rise of a Minneapolis Bridge

I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse, Minneapolis, Minnesota (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Portions of this post was originally published as "Tumbling Down" on August 9, 2007.  It has been updated and revised.

Imagine, if you will, driving down a major metropolitan bridge  in the heart of the rush hour.  Suddenly, the ground underneath you buckles, cars start disappearing in front of you, and either you fall into the river or come face to face with broken steel girders and crooked slabs of concrete.  Either you survive this or you don't.

No need to imagine.  This actually happened on the evening of August 1, 2007--ten years ago this week--on what used to be known as the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis, which had been traveled on by an estimated 140,000 cars daily.  The collapse killed 13 people and injured 145.

This was a disaster that could have happened just about anywhere.  Roads, bridges and utilities decades old have gone without improvements.  The I-35W bridge, built in 1967, was deemed "structurally deficient" back when it was last inspected in 2005.  It wasn't supposed to be replaced until 2020.

The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the collapse on a gusset plate that was too thin, plus the added weight from all those cars.  Terrorism was not involved.

One question bothered me throughout this crisis:  What if this happened in New York City?  There are a few bridges crossing the Hudson River that could easily have gone down with ten times more traffic than Minneapolis.  If this were in New York, broadcast and cable news coverage would be wall-to-wall, not to mention the havoc it would have created on social media.  The President and Congress would be taking immediate action, and the country would be in mourning for several days.  If this had happened in New York, Minneapolis would be quickly forgotten the way the Oklahoma City bombing of its federal building was after September 11, 2001.

President Donald Trump made a promise during the campaign to upgrade the country's infrastructure, and he has proposed a budget that would improve roads, bridges, airports, etc.  But Congress, exhausted from having failed once again to repeal and replace Obamacare along with the ongoing shenanigans in the White House, is putting infrastructure on the back burner for now.

Soon after the bridge collapsed, plans were made to build a replacement on the same site.  Construction began in September 2007, and was impressively finished a year later.  The rebuilt structure, now named the St. Anthony Falls Bridge, opened September 18, 2008.  But every August 1st since then, a moment of silence is observed to honor the victims of what happened here on a summer's evening in 2007.  After all, it could have been you or me.