Thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who was impacted by the bridge tragedy in Minneapolis tonight.

That's for sure. Hopefully they'll find out how this happened and whether there was any cupability on the part of the contractors that built the bridge. I hope and pray that it was not a greedy cutting of corners to get the bid that caused this.

The bridge has been doing wonderful things for 40 years.

The issue is the lifetime of the bridge, and how to work out when the bridge ceased to be safe.

This is best done prior to catastrophic failure.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

^^^ What Oldfart said

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Eudaimonia

I'm almost afraid to turn on the news or check the newspapers online to see what the fatality count is now.

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Deus Impetitio Esuritori Nullus

IM, last night it stood at 7...this morning, it had been revised *downward* to "only" four.

Still scrags your whole day if you were one of the four.

And the problem is apparently, not that the bridge is forty years old, but that and inspection done just last year or the year before found some structural flaws that were deemed to not be safety issues. Of course, we'll have to wait for the word on whether or not *that* inspection got the call right: perhaps those flaws were really more serious than they were made out to be, or perhaps whatever caused the collapse was much more deeply hidden.

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My understanding is that the bridge was built in '68.


THAT IS NOT 40 YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!

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Mrs. WI was very quick to point out that I'm almost as old as that bridge.

It's my understanding that the bridge was inspected three years ago and given a clean bill of health, but I'm sure more recent activity has taken place that will be elaborated upon.

This comes at a time when the DOT has recently made the announcement that in an effort to reduce unnecessary expenses...they are only requiring that bridges rated in "Fair" condition be inspected once every four years. As a further note, those of you that recall the 1983 Mianus River Bridge collapse here in CT may be interested to know that the bridge had been evaluated "Good" (better than Fair) just two years prior to it's collapse.

At any rate, it's a scary thing and I pray for those involved.

According to Wikipedia the bridge was built in 1967. The brigde is/was 1,900 feet long. And 141,000 vehicles used the bridge every day.

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A terrible and sad tragedy.

I'm sure they will taking a long hard look at the bridges in the Seattle area.

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In memory of my friend skip...
Go then, there are other worlds than these

According to what I read, the bridge was getting what they termed "minor resurfacing" when the collapse started, some of the workers reported "riding the bridge down"...rescue has turned to recovery, cars are known to be under chunks of concrete, which always must be moved very carefully (esp. when dealing with the mighty Mississippi), & some 30 souls are unaccounted for...

Was watching a program the other night about 2 earlier bridge collapses, & one of the sad things is that in the US it seems most of our infrastucture is deteriorating at a rate we don't wanna think about while driving around...

A personal note, the son (same age as my #1 & a frequent playmate of same way back when) of an old friend of ours lives in the Twin Cities area, & was about .5 mile from the bridge when it went down...he heard it collapse...

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A horrible tragedy!!

Impossible to imagine the terror.

:-(