A Brief History of: The I-35w Collapse Disaster 2007 (Documentary)
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- Опубликовано: 17 дек 2021
- #history #bridge #disaster
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The I-35W Mississippi River bridge was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Mississippi River.
The bridge opened in 1967 and was Minnesota's third busiest.
It had a catastrophic failure during the evening rush hour on August 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145.
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My mother's business helped rebuild the new I35W bridge!
Yes I do fancy
I live in that area and I remember when it happened. My engineering school eventually used scrap metal from the wreckage to make rings for graduates to wear so they remember their responsibility of public safety.
I like that, good use of the scrap
That is deep.
Thats metal as frig lol
SAME!
But welding school instead of engineering school, we studied the heat treating and welds
The moment any civil engineer says "Let's go cheap", you know shit is about to go south.
I'm going to assume that it wasn't the civil engineer who said "let's go cheap". There was probably a committee of unqualified politicians who made that call.
Well it actually went west or east
@@infamous1857 No it didn't... Those were two separate routes. I35 East or I35 West, both of which go North and South...
@@infamous1857 odd numbered interstates ultimately travel north and south, while even number travel east and west
*the government*
I drove over this bridge everyday during work. I drove over it 5 mins before it collapsed and remember being stuck in traffic for at least 10 mins while on the bridge. Terrifying to think about what might have happened.
Wow! You were very lucky! Glad you are here to tell your experience!🤗❤
I had crossed it about 15 minutes or so before it collapsed. I wasn’t even home yet, and my phone started going crazy with people asking if I was ok.
I used to cross that bridge on my school bus everyday, it was summer break at the time this happened but it was a serious wake up call to my 13 year old self that anything can happen 😰
I remember being terrified of bridges after this for years tho
@@jardolin Our cells went down. My family didnt know I was ok till almost an hour later when I pulled in.
You would’ve fell. That’s what would’ve happened. It’s not really a might, gravity is a pretty consistent force in our world.
Something for non-Minnesotans to keep in mind is that we have extreme temperature swings between our summers and winters, with very humid and hot summers that make roadwork nigh unbearable mixed with brutal winters that cause multiple thawing and refreezing events that create and exacerbate any cracks/flaws in infrastructure. This is not to say that this event was unavoidable, but that roadwork and consistent maintenance is both much more necessary and much more difficult than in many other places which is why there were so many major renovations to the bridge, and also why we have a common joke that there's only two seasons; winter and road construction.
For our international friends: it swings from a high of about 29c in the summer, to a low of about -14c in the winter
Colder than that, even. It easily gets -40 (conveniently the same F and C) in the winter for at least a few weeks, and up to 110F/43C in the summer. And having massive swings of 30-45 degrees in one day is pretty common (record being 53 degrees in one day from 43F/6C down to -10F/-23C). That kind of fluctuation seriously taxes pretty much every building material.
@@pygmybugs : The other day it went from 50-something to 17 in Rochester... everything flash froze!
We also love dumping salt on roads and bridges to help control snow and ice
I’m from Alberta Canada. Same thing here!
It's worth mentioning that there was a nearly identical bridge (made by the same company) in St. Cloud. When they inspected it closely, they noted that the gusset plates on that bridge were also starting to fail. I'd been on that bridge countless times and was on it the day after the 35w collapse. I remember a certain nervousness when crossing and it turns out that it was well founded
That would be the DeSoto Bridge. It and several bridges like it were closed almost immediately after the collapse. The DeSoto bridge is now replaced by the Granite City Crossing, bridge #73014.
Man the traffic across STC was hellacious when that bridge was out, but I was glad they replaced it! Mind you, I was smart enough to stay off Division at all costs anyway (too much fucking traffic), but it would have sucked for *somebody* if collapsed.
@@jeremiahshoemaker9512 I was going to add that, that following the I35 bridge collapse, many bridges across the US were inspected and taken out of use for repair or replacement.
@@shatteredshards8549 May be about closing time again.
I went over the i35 bridge 15 minutes before it collapsed.
I remember this day. My mom had mentioned in passing, that she sometimes used this bridge to cross in order to get to her work.
We were living with our dad, in North Dakota at the time. So we got the news not long after it collapsed
We called our mom multiple times, and when she finally answered. She told us that she had missed the first bus, and had to wait for the next. So she was completely safe
Yea my mom was pretty close to getting on it but got stuck in traffic leading up to the on ramp,
Wow thats a really good mistake!
Look at God, she missed that bus which potentially saved her life. I'm so happy she was safe.
@@kita1989 god had nothing to do with it but pop off sis
@@moppupaws Shut up.
My mom was almost on that bridge when it collapsed, she called my dad and told him it felt "wrong" when she crossed it in the morning and made a point of avoiding it on the way home. My dad had thought her paranoid before the news that evening.
Wow. That's amazing! Her inner spirit could just tell it was unsafe.
wow, that sounds just like that movie, or wait the other movie, or another
Lot of such anecdotes around events like this. Loads of ‘haunted houses’ that just give people a ‘bad feeling’ are actually the human body sensing instability in the structure at certain frequencies, which causes a feeling of unease and alertness. Your mother might’ve felt something similar on the bridge, not a psychic premonition, but a vibration or creaking or something like.
@@z.m.stewart1996 Never said psychic premonition, her words were something to the effect of "it felt loose"
@@guywhodoesstuff3314 you and @z.m.stewart 1996 are welcome to think I'm nuts, but I think the bad feeling, sensing instability, is just on a sliding scale of frequency from psychic premonitions. There are a lot of charlatans, and there are also people who genuinely have a psychic ability. In any case, there's something to be said for trusting your gut.
Born and raised in mpls, my aunt had a coworker that got off on the wrong exit this particular day and she drove over this bridge for her first time. Her first time she had ever driven on it and by accident and it collapsed when she was on it. She had some serious injuries but survived and got so much money from the state that she retired in her 40's.
Okay I asked my aunt the story again and correction her coworker retired in her 30's
Kind of a good and bad thing
Good to hear she is ok.
Wish I was there
@@krzysztofcylwich2817 , "wish you were here" is a song that is frequently played at funerals.
Engineers: use the stronger steel
Gov't: no
*collapses after gov't adds layers/weight
Gov't: those engineers are gonna pay!
The issue wasn't necessarily the stronger steel. The engineers didn't convert the ENTIRE plan to the thinner metal. So yeah, engineers pay up.
@@agirlisnoone5953 it was both parties fault, they should have paid for the stronger metal as it would cost less in the long term because they would have to do less repairs.
the engineers were very rushed in making the bridge so they didnt have time to remake the blueprints
The government usually goes with the cheapest contractor available so they can pocket the money either for themselves, or to reimburse their donors.
@TheMatron'sMilitia ..... The engineers designed it wrong....
And they probably spent more on the steel due to the huge increase in weight even though it was slightly cheaper per lb
i can’t imagine how people that drove on the bridge minutes or even seconds before it collapsed felt..
my uncle drove over this a few minutes before it collapsed, i dont remember much but i do know one of our family friends is paralyzed waist down from it
One of my coworkers went over it barely 5 minutes before it fell. He heard the crash, but didn't know what it was until he arrived at the store he was running an order to. "Nervous breakdown" was the phrase used to describe what happened when he found out how close a call he'd had; he quit maybe two weeks later, so I don't know how he's doing today.
Simply heart sick!
I always hated getting stuck in traffic on this bridge. It would shake vertically and horizontally. It was terrifying. It was always like that but MNDOT always said it was fine. After the collapse the Hwy 52 bridge in St. Paul, which also vibrated a lot, was fixed immediately.
Another fun fact, my buddy worked for the company that rented equipment for the rebuilding of the bridge. Two large scissor lifts were placed in the main pillars of the new bridge as it was built. Nobody realized until they were done that the lifts wouldn't fit through the doors now.
They are still inside the pillars today.
Wow! Someday that will come in handy, lol
That is f'ing terrifying on a bridge so big
@@imaguy123
I thought so but the government said it was fine.
Until it wasn't.
If the government ever tells you something is fine, it probably isn’t fine.
I survived this collapse. This was a horrible tragedy. I would not wish this on anyone! I was afraid of going over bridges for nearly a decade. :( And still having back pain.
This failure was heavily discussed amongst my friends; mostly engineers or former engineering types, this kind of maintenance and design failure is fascinating to us.
Exactly most people think it was just lack of maintenance but it was actually built improperly from the very start.
@@Hack_The_Planet_ yep. And the design vs. cost considerations played a big part in those design decisions. Engineers and architects love dissecting these failures, in large part because it helps increase awareness of the ways 'mundane' factors can have fatal consequences.
Plus, there's always schadenfreude.
Is it true that most engineers at the time were taught gusset plates were over-engineered?
The striking thing thing about this disaster is how there was little warning. Most of these videos, you have to simply marvel at how many mistakes were made/how many warning signs were missed. But this bridge wasn't in worse condition than most bridges across the country, and they were checking it 6 times a month already.
@@stephanie8560 yes and no. The 1" plates were more than needed *at the time of design.* But the 0.5" plates were under-spec. At the time of design, 0.75" gussets would have been the medium choice.
But none of those considerations looked forward to increased usage and static loads. In part, the design failure was a failure of imagination - no one considered that future maintenance and upgrades might increase static loads.
Edit: in short, the bridge was not "Future Proof."
If they money paid out in the lawsuits had been used instead to build it from the original design materials, this hopefully never would have happened and been less expensive in the long run.
I was astonished how quickly they replaced the bridge after the collapse. There must have been huge pressure on the designers and construction contractors to get it finished.
Imagine if they'd just spent the money in the first place! No interruption of service, and (more importantly) no deaths!
They had a bonus. It was in the thousands of dollars per day if they completed it before the deadline. I worked in the office building directly next to it in the SW side and it was probably the single most incredible engineering feat I will ever see.
anything to not have to take 100 i guess
It was also quickly replaced to help our communities heal. A constant reminder of that day was unavoidable for quite sometime. I was a responder on that day. I had the day off and was called in to help within the first hours of the collapse. A memory that will remain burned into my mind. We each received a gold pin of the 35 W bridge with the tragedies date. I also had a close friends girlfriend on that bridge. She survived but the PTSD cut her life short.
How quickly it was built doesn’t make me feel any better tho…
Me and my toddler at the time were supposed to be up at walker art center and the surrounding area that day to take photos. I got a massive migraine about an hour before we were to go, ended up taking a nap and stayed home. My mom started calling at 515 freaking out. Never been more grateful for a migraine in my life
Hello 👋 Jennifer how are you doing and i hope you’re having a wonderful weekend.?
They saved 7 cents per pound on that steel, but had to nearly double the amount of steel bought.
Just plain stupid.
Probably a little kickback from the supplier
This disaster was the single biggest catalyst in pushing me into industrial inspection. It definitely left an impression. I now work in Nondestructive Testing, radiographic method.
It happened in my home state and I was 7 at the time. I knew people who knew people on the bridge when it collapsed.
Also, my final in University Public Speaking was talking about this collapse.
One thing that was not mentioned was the fact that one of the bridge roller shoes was WELDED SHUT in an earlier renovation. MN has temperatures ranging from about -40F to 105F in a given season. The bridge was allowed to bend and twist around a single point for about 15 years before the collapse, adding to the fatigue.
I knew I'd find a fellow NDT Inspector down here! MPI/FPI Lv2. Though I work in aerospace and defense now, I think of this bridge several times a week. Pretty sure it had a factor in my career path.
@@RaijuFiction Very cool. I am a LVL 2 RT (CT and DR) NAS-410.
I work in an inspection services lab and we mostly work on aerospace, med device, R&D, and forensic engineering in that order.
@@jeremiahshoemaker9512 so you don't make shoes?
@@jeremiahshoemaker9512 you and the other seems like you have very fun and wonderful careers. I guess we all have a purpose in this life
I remember when this happened and I'd say the historic legacy scale, at least in Minnesota, was a lot higher. In the years following they inspected every bridge in the state and moved up replacement on a lot of them.
The bridge in my hometown was ranked the worst in the state once they finished their state wide inspections. It was one of, if not the first to be replaced. It's crazy how much we take for granted our infrastructure. We assume everything is supposed to be very safe and well constructed, but history shows how that is often far from reality. Our bridge was in terrible shape, yet we all drove over it everyday assuming it was safe and in good, solid shape.
I live near Pittsburgh (the city of bridges) and after this happened, I remember bridges being down for over 2 years. Not all of them at once of course. They ALL had to be inspected and fixed if needed.
I was living here when it happened, and it was terrifying. My sister regularly took that bridge home from work, but she'd gone back streets that day because the construction had the traffic so congested. I didn't know that until after, and you couldn't get a call through to a mobile phone because everyone was trying to at once. A friend's wife was trapped in her car (at a precarious angle) with her legs crushed for hours and hours until she was able to be extricated. She required years of multiple surgeries and therapy to be able to walk again. I went by it a bit later (before cleanup), and pictures can't convey how HUGE it all was. The sheer mass of roadway slabs and tangled girders. This was a really good description of it. I've seen a couple others. What none of them have really commented on was how our frankly insane temperature fluctuations effect building materials' integrity. We get -40C and +43C. It can be 50 degrees F and 30C difference in one DAY. In the summer, road surfaces will buckle up several inches. Even with expansion seams, our roads are constantly falling apart. Cheap asphault patches are holding most of them together.
No matter the disaster, it's always charming to hear what the weather was like while you were editing. Never stop. Someday historians will need your primary source to show that England is, in fact, sometimes sunny.
The ridiculous thing is, we have more rain than Borneo, but if we get 3weeks of sunny weather, we have a drout. That's living on an island for you.
Huh?????
@@stephenbrookes7268 same with germany… one sunny week after it rains for a month straight and the climate scientists start crying that its too dry smh
I'm from Minnesota, but live in Europe. I was in Minneapolis on vacation. I was flying out that day, we drove over the bridge. When I got back home in Europe, completely jet lagged, my neighbor came rushing in seeing if I was alright. I had no idea what was going on. It was like in the movies, she turned on the tv and there it was, the bridge I had driven over no more than 24 hours prior.
Surreal for sure. I had a similar situation with the I-40 near Webbers Falls, OK when a barge hit it. Only a day after I'd been camping in the area. Pretty wild
I'm another native from Minnesota and I'm happy you're safe. That was a tragic event that unexpectedly happened.
Why would u ever go to minneapolis on vacation😂🤣
@@xReece2010 because that's where I'm from?
I lived just a few blocks away from the bridge and remember being at home when a short brown-out happened and the sirens began. A friend and I walked down to the river where we could see the collapsed bridge and the rescue in process. The next bridge over, Stone Arch (a pedestrian bridge), was lined with people taking pictures with their phones. It was a horrifying occurrence. There had been big holes from the construction visible on the bridge beforehand and it was unnerving to cross with the holes and piece of large equipment. Preventable? Yes, but no one wanted to take responsibility for the time and inconvenience of a new bridge. Excellent coverage as usual.
They sounded the air raid sirens for that? That must've been scary as hell.
@@TheSleepyMechanic0524 Ah sorry, no, not air raid sirens. Just a lot of police/ambulance/ pretty much every emergency vehicle siren in the region for a bit. Very loud. The phone lines went a bit spotty as well, as everyone was trying to call loved ones at the same time to check in on them and make sure they weren't on the bridge.
@@cyelemental I was working at the Metrodome plaza (for those not familiar, the Metrodome is the giant white thing in the lower left hand of the screen at the beginning of the video). I didn't know what happened at first, but every single vehicle with lights and sirens flew past the dome on the way to the scene
@@ajfurnari2448 it was madness. I was on the other side of the river (by Alma), on University, and saw the first responders coming from the north.
Hello 👋 how are you doing and i hope you’re having a wonderful weekend.?
Thanks to this channel, I'm not only afraid of nuclear reactors and decommissioned hospitals, but dams, abandoned coal mines, and now bridges too.
I'm looking forward to Plainly Difficult making me afraid of even more common things in 2022.
You should try Mr. Ballen. His stories will make you glad that you can have nearly anything you want delivered to your door, so you don't have to leave your house! LOL ✌😸
Try Taunton Sleeping Car Fire 1978. Will make you scared of train heaters and bed sheets ......😥
@@PhoenixLyon he also uploads one to two times a week
@@ImLilPlant Yeah. I'm glad he's taking time away, but man! I miss them days of five uploads a week.✌😸
Um, do you know the way to Bells canyon?😉
LITERALLY SAME a week ago I was watching about nuclear explosions and then wirlpools and it keeps escalating from there, my anxiety is hating me.
I’ve been waiting on this one…
Why? Because this collapse happened while I was on the bridge. I was only a month solo into my trucking career. Thank you for covering this!
I’ve lived in Minneapolis my whole life and I was just a child when this happened but it literally felt like our worlds were flipped upside down after it happened. Our infrastructure is not only aging but poorly designed and stunted from the start in many cases.
Yes, it is.
I heard about a bridge closure on the news, and I drove a fully loaded 18-wheeler on that same bridge, while they were inspecting it because of a report of a large structural failure on said bridge! 🤔 yikes!
I live in brainerd, and was quite stunned when that bridge collapsed. I do know that at least as a benefit from this, the MNDOT are doing many more bridge inspections.
Politticians spend money on bread and circuses, not on maintenance.
Here in CA that wake-up call came with the Loma Prietta Earthquake. We realized the method that we used for bridge construction led to collapse. Until that earthquake the method that we used and thought was the best was actually the worst. And we still have bridges using that old method on most major highway interchanges. Work is still ongoing to fix them.
@@soakupthesunman one of the things that the Well There’s Your Problem Podcast brought up: politicians love ribbon cutting, hate maintenance. Ribbon cutting on a new shiny thing voters can see and big contracts to lobbyist’s clients. Maintenance voters can’t see and lobbyist’s clients don’t get as big of a check. This is seen in the massive military budget. They get new toys all the time while old stuff that performs very well gets thrown out, and we the people don’t get as many services from the government like road maintenance or high speed rail to compete with airlines.
I remember the day this happened. My husband was headed to southern Minnesota with our two children. I had stayed home. They had to cross that bridge to get to their destination. Luckily they crossed it several hours earlier, but I didn’t know when or if they had reached that point. I remember being frantic watching the news, waiting for him to check in with me. When he finally did, their biggest problem had been getting caught in a severe thunderstorm, possible tornado on the interstate. Which was also scary, but not as traumatic as the bridge collapse.
One of my aunts best friends was on the bridge when it collapsed, luckily she survived the collapse and pulled out of her car underneath the wreckage but she was injured badly and rushed to the hospital. I remember she was interviewed on one of the local news channels here in Minnesota while she was still in the hospital. One of the most horrific things I remember from my childhood.
sorry to hear that and im sure thats rough, i fid what helps is to always think about jow much worse it coulda been or how much worse it actually is for others, some ppl never saw their loved ones again ya know... in my life ive lost plenty to freak accidnets like my grandpa(moms dad) amd uncle(moms brother) to freak accidents, in oct 2019 lost my mom to a disease so rare it only kills 22 ppl a year and then i lost my best friend a year later he got hit by a train an i mean best friend since we was born 2 months apart and out other best friend we lost a few years earlier he was born within those 2 months with us and he was shot... and for so long i felt like it couldnt get worse and then it would get worse and eventually i realised it can always be worse. ive watched and researched other ppls stories and how they got through even tougher times than me and it encourages me to keep moving forward and be the best me i can be for myself but also alot for my loved ones, both those that i have left and the ones ive lost... my mom was only 47 and my best friend only 25... im now 26.... keeep your head up and remember someone else got it so much worse so just try an appreicate every little thing amd everyone you have left, and we all suck at it sometimes but just try, and keep pushing for whatever goals you want in life give it your all. prayers and love to yall, glad everyone was ok in the end, be safe... and yeah my grandpa and uncle were childhood happened from 8-11 years old ans that can traumatize ankid. best of wishes to you and all yours
Timestamp:
0:00 Intro
1:13 Background
2:15 Design
7:13 Issues
9:21 Collapse
13:11 Investigation
14:38 Aftermath
Thank you 😄
No, thank you!
As a Minnesotan I can tell you this was one of those "do you remember where you were when ___ happened?"
Also thanks for doing this disaster, as it should be remembered, still learned new things too
I was making macaroni and cheese in my grandmother's style. I always remember what was happening when I was making that dish, because I rarely make it, always eat too fucking much of it, and get gut rot!
I was in summer school taking three classes at once. I had to cross the Washington Ave. bridge pretty routinely but didn't notice anything unusual when the event happened but it did get discussed in one class (a classmate said her mother was a diver who was called up to remove corpses).
They stored the parts of the structure recovered within view of the Washington Ave. bridge.
Like the Halloween snowstorm.
I was at my brothers with my dad waiting to watch the twins game.
I was 6 years old and my mom and I would go over this bridge almost everyday. We were in Sioux Falls visiting my grandma when this happened.
Here in my small UK town, they had a look at one of the two bridges across the river... and decided that they needed to shut it down, and completely refurbish the thing. This is an old bridge. Not sure whether this kind of disaster made them look at the bridges in the UK in detail or not, but the upshot was 2 years of a bridge being closed to ensure it remains safe.
Sadly most countries, UK included, still have issues when it comes to safety (grenfell for example)
Probably not. Europe as a whole tends to have better regulatory structures than the US. It was probably a routine check turned up a problem that lead to a closure and work. Catching stuff like this so the bridge can be closed and work done before it collapses is why routine inspections are a thing.
Same thing happened here in our small town in Pennsylvania, USA. Due to arguments on how to renovate/repair/replace it, the bridge is still closed. It's a shame because the bridge saved time from the round trip you have to take now.
@@darthkarl99 italy has some spectacular bridge collapses. Germany has a maintenance backlog. I could name reasons, but better regulatory structures do not prevent secondary problems.
@@sarowie Prevent, absolutely not, tend to make them less severe or less common. Yes.
No regulatory structure is perfectly written nor perfectly enforced, the point about good regulation is to build redundancy into checks and balances so that even if one or two steps mess up the rest catch it. No system is perfect but in general Europe tends to be ahead of the US in having robust ones.
@N Fels I have my own UK based experiance in another industry and any look at the history of industrial accidents in any country will show that such things happen. The point of a strong regulatory structure isn't to be perfect but to put more checks and balances in place to catch failings and flaws.
As an aside i can't speak to your specific case but given certain US tendencies some of those safety violations you got into a beef with the union rep over may not even be safety violations in the US. A classic example would be seat-belt laws. Only about half the US states have seat-belt laws comparable to Europe, the rest are all only part way, (or in one case no seat-belt laws at all).
I lived a few blocks away when this happened. I remember smelling burning rubber as soon as I walked outside. I went down there and got some pictures from the #9 bridge. I also worked for the city of Minneapolis at the time and saw a lot of pictures taken by other city workers from much closer than most people could get. The authorities brought all the recovered vehicles to the impound lot and surrounded them with busses to shield them from the media while they removed the bodies. I toured the impound lot shortly after this happened and saw some of the vehicles up close including a burned out bread delivery truck where the driver was killed. It was a sobering thing to see.
The bread truck is in several photos in this video. I had wondered if the driver survived.
@@5roundsrapid263 Sadly, no, the driver of the truck did not survive. Did you notice the school bus next to the truck? 11:17 and 13:15. As the bridge was falling, the truck driver saw the bus full of children next to him. He used his truck to push the bus to the side, away from the falling section of bridge deck. The bridge fell on him instead of the bus. He saved an entire bus of children. He is a hero.
@@jenniferneve2723 Wow. I never knew that. It sounds like something from a movie or a song. What a hero.
I think everyone loves to see their favorite RUclipsrs recognize their home town, unless it's Plainly Difficult.
Growing problem in the US is the lack of appropriate renovation/ maintenance of major highways and bridges across the country
The highway act did what it needed to do (displaced minority communities from good work opportunities and moved people further from city centers) so why would they spend money that car companies aren't paying them to spend?
@@wilhelmdietrich8474 and you supported the results?
@@Falchanco No. Why would you think that? I pretty much literally said that the reason they're not maintaining the highways is because they don't give a fuck about people.
Now that there are significant material shortages, its only going to get worse.
My sister was on that school bus when it collapsed. I was too young to understand at the time what had happened but now that I'm much older now I can see how horrible of a situation this is. I love her so much.
Is she okay? Prayers to you family 💕
@@leahlovesforever She's entirely okay now, aside from PTSD from the incident. She got to sign her name on the school bus door and they put it up in a museum here
@@poet8708 Im glad she’s fine 😁❤️
The evening this happened, local cell phone networks got so bogged down with people trying to check on their loved ones that there were times that you couldn't even get a call through. It's almost surreal to think that it's been 14 years.
It kind of got thrown in as an afterthought at the end - but to investigate, clean up, design, and build a new bridge in just over a year was an incredible feat given the size of the bridge and the challenges of building in a river gorge. Truly remarkable.
Thanks for covering this one. I was nearby when it happened, having just gone over that brigde about an hour before it collapsed. It was a tragic situation for sure. As usual I learned a great deal from your analysis. Thank you.
I lived in MSP during the late '80's, and had a chance to look at this bridge from underneath on several occasions. It was clearly in poor condition way back then, with major corrosion (road salt and pigeon poo) and expansion joint gearing/rollers that appeared to be seized, or near so; definitely poorly lubricated and maintained. It all looked... weak, and spindly, and not very good, and I'd avoid driving across that bridge if at all possible. If I had to I'd pucker all the way across... always glad to make it to the other side.
My friends thought I was nuts... until it fell.
wrong. was in very good shape. they parked the weight of 2 diesel locomotives on the bridge. that is 450 tons. just let me park 2 diesel locomotives on and road bridge and 99% will fall down from to much weight
@@dknowles60 Did you even watch the video...? The bridge was substandard from day one and time and poor maintenance took their toll.
@@scofab did you ever read the NTSB report. it said over loaded. again. let me place 2 200 ton diesel locootives on any highway bridge and the weight will bring it down. how bad did you fail math.
@@dknowles60 The steel of many the gusset plates was 1/2 the thickness required for the grade utilized in construction. And the bridge received "structurally deficient" ratings from 1991 onward. That combined with the three MILLION pounds of road surfacing added in 1977, and a further surfacing and other additions that added over another million pounds in 1998.
The final construction project was merely the straw that broke a very weakened camel's back... a camel that was poorly conceived in 1964.
@@scofab I can bring anything thing down by over loading Ohio has close to the same bridge on I 71 I did very good but Ohio replace it with a new 🌉 bridge
We had a "temporary" bridge in Bratislava over the Danube river, that replaced the bridge which the Nazis blew up at the end of WWII. The temporary truss bridge was meant to serve only 10 years. But it managed to hold up for decades. The structure deteriorated quite badly and first car transport was banned, only buses allowed and ultimately closed to all traffic. Then the heavy concrete plates were removed and pedestrian traffic was once again allowed (which was located on one side of the bridge). The bridge served way over its design and did not collapse. Mainly because regular inspection and measures. Today a new truss bridge stands in its place. Designed to last 150 years. This shows that you need to regularly inspect critical structures and take measures which prevent a disaster, even if they are unpopular. I know that some people were placing bets when the bridge will collapse, as it was being used way past its original lifetime and load. Only thanks to checks and measures, no disaster happened. Maybe it is because just a few kilometers upstream the Danube, the Reichsbrücke in Vienna collapsed a couple of decades ago, so people were very careful.
I can see the logic of the buses-only rule (there are presumably a lot fewer of them than there are cars), but it still seems kind of counterintuitive to ban smaller vehicles from a structurally suspect bridge and allow much bigger ones with many more people aboard to use it.
@@ZGryphon The bridge suffered from congestion, especially during the peak morning hours. Cars and buses were standing on the bridge, creating additional load. When cars were banned, only a bus would drive over the bridge every 2 minutes and most important there was no queue of standing/slow moving vehicles.
I remember seeing the news about the collapse. We had travelled the bridge many times before never knowing about the issues with it. I'm sure very few knew. I remember pointing out the school bus on the bridge before the news anchors made mention of it. It felt like the bridge falling was a wakeup call to just how shoddy the US's infrastructure had become since it was built.
Yeah, lots of parts about the U.S.'s infrastructure and city planning from the 60's is flawed. Sadly, it takes years of hard work (or a tragedy or two) for policies involving infrastructure and city planning to change. We can only educate ourselves and cross our fingers at this point.
Congrats on 500 thousand subs!! Love your videos
Thank you!
I can’t believe this was over a decade ago… feels like yesterday, I can remember the reports coming out
As someone from MN that lives next to 35W I knew a lot of people including my parents who had crossed that bridge that day. I was very young at the time but I remember how upset everyone got about it.
Its one of those cases where you could've been one of the victims easily
This moment is something that's seared into the minds of us Minnesotans who were old enough to understand and remember it. My best friend and her mom went across this bridge twice the day it collapsed. It really makes you realize how precious other people's lives are.
I remember watching a Brick Immortar video about this collapse a while back, you've both got such different methods of video editing and presenting that I didn't realize it was the same collapse until about halfway through haha
🤫...Brick Immortar... 🤫
Being from Minnesota I remember the collapse that day, the community came together to help those who were effected so quickly.
I drove over that bridge the day before the collapse, going to an off-site meeting for work, you could feel it shaking significantly as you drove on it, I picked another route home that day because of it.
Having gone through engineering school recently, this bridge collapse was always mentioned as an example of why it's important to make sure designs are safe. I never thought I would have to deal with it because I didn't think I would be a bridge engineer... well turns out I'm a bridge engineer in training for the state of North Dakota so weather conditions and just about everything else is the same as Minnesota. Hopefully a disaster like this never occurs again!
I remember this vividly as I was on vacation to the Bahamas with my mom and sister and there was national attention on it. I still remember the dozens of people surrounded around the hotel lobby's tv room, some crying and frantically making phone calls. This instilled anxious feeling about crossing bridges has been with me since. These Mississippi river bridges are a wreck and I'm worried that many more will fail in my lifetime.
Im from Eagan Minnesota, and was 8 years old at the time this happened. Seemed like everyone you talked to had either known someone, or they themselves had recently been over the bridge. I always thought that was weird. But if you think about it.....That bridge was literally travelled by so many people. that bridge was such an undercover big part of everyone's lives. No one ever thought about it, But everyone drove on it.
I remember people being scared to drive anywhere into the cities after that, because you usually have to go over a bridge no matter what if you wanna enter St.Paul or Minneapolis.
I remember being at my uncle's cabin when this happened. Right after I finished watching Dumb & Dumber, we tuned into a news station and saw this. My mother had crossed that bridge every day to get to her job, so my dad was horrified to wonder if she was okay. Thankfully she was, but I always remember my dad's worry. This was the disaster that hit closest to home for me and my family. Although we were fortunate, it still hurts to think of those who weren't so fortunate.
This bridge is around 5k from where I grew up. My uncle did road construction, specializing in bridges, and he warned us to stay off the bridge. So I knew this was likely, but it was still heartbreaking.
So the A4441 and A242 steels are cheaper, but how much, if anything, did that really save them if they had to use so much more of it?
31 cents for A4441 compared to 38 cents for T-1 is not that big of a difference if you need to use substantially more A4441 steel, which on its own would certainly not justify the swap of the materials. The only unknown price factor seems to be the additional joints required.
Yes. A redesign/design change after the 30% design review (PDR) can drive up the cost exponentially. It’s a boat load of paperwork and important details that can be missed long before anything is ever built.
So saving 20% per pound by using twice as much steel due to half the strength per pound makes sense…
@@allangibson2408 Absolutely not. It would prompt me to look to see if there was a kickback somewhere in the chain of events. Who benefited from the redesign?
EXACTLY! Use more and make the bridge heavier. It's so often dollars that compromise designs, not bad engineering. Be nice if we could get back to over-engineering.
@@wintersbattleofbands1144 Agreed, but I've never really cared for that phrase "over-engineered". It basically means "built to last" but it has pejorative connotations. It seems to me that whenever something is not "over engineered," it's usually some pile of junk that only lasts 30 years at the outside.
I heard the engineers did calculations for the bottom plates, then assumed everything would be the same for the top.
Also important to note that (13:30) the structure was fracture-critical, meaning that the failure of any one beam would cause the span and then the entire bridge to fall. (2:40?) For a more comedic example, see the fiery train trestle collapse in San Saba Texas in 2013
Hey, they got 103 years out of it. Got their money's worth. Pretty amazing it took a fire to bring it down, and not the increasingly heavy railcars/loads introduced to it over the decades.
@@wintersbattleofbands1144 103 years is very impressive
I almost lost my dad to this. He had to go downtown for work for the first time since we moved here. He had gone over the bridge an hour before it went down. He went early because he didn't know how to navigate the city. I'm so glad he did. I'm so sorry for all those we lost in this. For a while the gusset plate went on a museum tour. I got to see it a few times. It was so small and it caused this major lose of life.
Me and my mom drove over 35W literally 15 mins before this happened. We hadn't even made it home yet when we heard the news on the radio. I still think about it fairly often. Thank you for making this.
My step-father was one of the contractors working on the bridge when it collapsed, still extremely thankful that he wasn't on the section over the water when it went down and he only suffered a broken arm.
Did you ask him how the bridge felt before it collapsed I’ve been looking for construction worker accounts.
I recently watched a show called "I survived" and the bus driver, her daughter, and another person on the bus talked about what happened. (The bus shown at 11:15 ) The semi In front of them was waving at the kids on the bus as they were signaling him to pull the horn, they were all having a great time and then the bridge fell and the semi driver just a few feet ahead of the bus was killed on impact. Everyone on the bus was OK, the bus driver had a broken back I think.
A&E’s “I Survived” brought me to this particular video. It goes into the story of the passengers on the school bus. (11:17) Very interesting story the passengers shared. R.I.P. to all who lost their lives in this tragedy. 🙏🏿
Another commenter shared they largely owe their lives to the driver of a bakery truck, and that driver's story should be common knowledge:
Apparently the bus was on a section curling into nothingness (versus dropping flat in stages). The driver of the bakery truck was next to the bus, and used his truck to shove the bus sideways onto the "safer" flat section - meaning his truck then occupied the space the bus was originally on. The driver died from the fall.
"The Tasty Bakery truck was one of the tragic stories of the collapse [...] after crashing immediately adjacent to the school bus. Bound for Mason City, Iowa with a load of bakery goods, the truck fell hard into one of the gaps between intact sections of the bridge deck, and it was reported that the driver did not survive the impact." (Source: 13 Seconds in August)
@@Loki_K O my goodness…wow is all I can really say. Brave isn’t a good enough word, hero isn’t a good enough word…this makes my heart sink a bit to learn about this bakery truck driver’s sacrifice. Thank U for sharing this information, & may the bakery truck driver forever rest in paradise. 🙏🏿
As always, your video has knocked it out of the park! I'm from Minneapolis, and honestly this is the best explanation I've ever heard of the bridge collapse.
Hello 👋 Brianna how are you doing and i hope you’re having a wonderful weekend.?
35 splits in two down in my neck of the woods in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex, too. It confuses the everliving hell out of visitors because they simply cannot wrap their heads around the concept of "I-thirty five north west".
Up here is 35W and 35E. So people going to St. Paul can go one way and people that are going to Minneapolis go another.
@@melaniegreufe640 Yeah it's the same way here. 35W is for going to Ft. Worth and 35E is for Dallas. It's just confusing to visitors when it's said verbally in GPS voice directions. lol
Here we'd say 35W northbound or 35E southbound, etc.
@@stephanie8560 Oh that's how we say it, too. Google Maps doesn't, though. It'll literally direct you to "merge onto I-35 West North".
One of my profs in college out in Florida had come to Dallas on business years before and he told me how confusing that was, along with, "I came to the conclusion that all roads in Dallas lead to Deep Ellum. If you get lost in Dallas you'll end up in Deep Ellum. Always. No matter what. And you give people about five feet to merge and exit."
Navigation apps have definitely made people forget basic map reading skills and lose their sense of direction.
This happened when i was about 7, it feels weird to know this happened right next to me in my home state, my mom still avoids bridges with a burning passion. I still have to take that route just about every day to go to jiu jitsu.
Same
This is especially fascinating to me as I travelled over that bridge twice on the day it collapsed.
I’m from Minneapolis and I remember the day that this happened. I feel a kind of dubious honor that we’ve made it onto a “Plainly Difficult” video.
We have a saying "I'm not so rich to afford to buy cheaply." Applies to engineering far to often.
My coworker was on that bridge about 5 feet from the sections that collapsed and my brother in law and sister in law were officers who responded to the scene. It was absolutely awful and so many are still dealing with PTSD from it. I remember hearing about it right as I was leaving work.
My husband and I were at dinner in Duluth when the news of the collapse came on the news. He had just driven across that bridge 3 hours earlier on his way home from a court hearing! I had instant chills.
I always watch to the end to see what kind of weather you're having. Congrats on having a sunny day today🤪💖
It was traumatizing a kid to see that happen. I thought for the longest time growing up about bridges collapsing & what I would do if it collapsed, how my family would survive, would we get rescued or get stuck in a current. Bridges & rivers scare me. I get a little nervous going over bridges still and worry about getting stuck in traffic on it. I have to take a few bridges anytime I wanna go see my mom in WI. I don't think about it as much as an adult but Its still in the back of my mind. A day we'll never forget here in MN.
I remember watching this on the news, I was expecting the death toll to be so much higher. That there were so few fatalities is a miracle.
+Being a truckdriver, I went over that bridge 2 times that day. Last about 3 hours before the collapse, then I delivered to the construction of it.
I'm from Minneapolis and my friend's family was driving on I35 that day, they were in two cars and one was just before the bridge, the other just after. They basically saw the bridge collapse from both sides and were separated with both thinking the other had died for a long time.
You're so good at explaining all of this stuff to a layman! Thank you for making these as I find them quite interesting, and I love all of your graphics and animations. They help a lot!
My dad was a concrete contractor in the twin cities at this time, so he knew many of the people working on the bridge when it collapsed, including a close friend who thankfully survived. I remember this vividly even though I was only a little kid. Damn scary and very upsetting that so little care was given to people’s safety and to structural integrity in lieu of “saving money”.
Finally! I've been waiting for you to make a video about this since I first found your channel. I've lived in the twin cities my whole life but only recently did I learn how large of an impact this had outside of the state.
I managed "Bridge Deck Rehab" for a number of years. Had concerns on numerous "older" bridges we performed repairs on. We NEVER stored materials on any bridges.
Thanks for doing this tragedy. One other item that got glossed over in the official report was that the inspectors at the time were trained to ignore the trusses.
During the early stages of the forensic investigation, an amateur photographer came out with a shot taken shortly after the last inspection of the bridge that showed concerning levels of corrosion along the trusses and girders as well as the concete piers.
Brick Immortar covered the training issues in their video, but the corrosion angle is largely ignored since it didn't fit with the "official" narrative that placed blame solely on the engineering firm.
I love how the authorities looking into the post disaster investigation seem to skim over how the Approving Authorities (USDoT, FHA, MDoT) approving the initial construction didn't recheck the calculations by the engineers after they insisted on the change in the steel to be used. Also, it appears that when the MDoT made later changes to the bridge structure they never revisited the design plans to recalculate the safety factors for the bridge. I do wonder how much all of the extra weight during the changes made in the bridge's life contributed to the failure, and the decisions during the final months are clearly a major aspect of the failure due to no one checking if it was safe to put all of that extra weight on the structure. The individuals who made all those decisions should have been identified and also charged with criminal negligence for the deaths in the collapse.
Another Minnesotan here. I was on a 19-day canoe trip in Canada when this (literally) went down, but there was a surreal moment when our halfway-point resupply arrived with food _and_ a note for me from my family about this bridge that all of us would cross at least 5 days a week.
The new bridge has never looked right to me.
Just another Minnesotan "proud" to see our little disaster make it to your channel...
I have been watching your channel for some time but never expected to see something I was actually familiar with! It was very interesting to hear the background about the bridge on the video. I lived in Minneapolis at the time, and it was a very scary time. I was safe at home, a few miles away, but I'm still not fond of being stuck in traffic on bridges. 😬
One small quibble: say "35-double-you" not "35 West."
I was 5 or 6 when this happened and I throughly remember hearing about it from the people around me and the news. I find that a lot of the infrastructure such as bridges and dams in the US are outdated. I find that particularly dangerous since MN has such extreme temperature changes from season to season causing even more were and tear compared to more stable climates
I remember this. I'm from Iowa and was traveling to Minneapolis on the regular for concerts. My friends and I had gone over that bridge multiple times just a few days before.
Then a few years later I'm in cycling from Stillwater to St Paul on a bike trail that goes under the I35E bridge. I couldn't believe the poor condition, especially after such an event just a few years before. I just thought, they hadn't learned a damn thing. And decided to take a different route when I went home.
Great video. New subscriber.
Don’t know why this was recommended but I loved how informative yet interesting you kept this video. Love your voice as well 👍🏼
Thank you
I was 6 when this happened, just a few miles from my house. I have so many little stories about the collapse. I think most of us in the cities at the time do.
a family friend watched the bridge collapse from her apartment. she and my mom were nurses in the same hospital unit. she called to tell them what happened, and that she was going down with a first aid kit.
my grandpa died at the u of m hospital 2 summers later. the waiting room closest to him overlooked the river, and I remember standing at the window and seeing these huge twisted beams laid out in bohemian flats.
i think 35 w is a big part of why I don't quite trust bridges and other tall structures.
Do you think this disaster was preventable? Let me know!
It’s known for a fact it was preventable, they ignored service many times over decades and then when it collapsed they discovered it had been built improperly in the first place. It was completely preventable.
How tf do you keep such a good upload schedule with this quality?? I struggle to watch the videos in a timely manner.
In the aftermath of this, we rebuilt quite a few bridges that were worse than the 35W. Minnesota had too many bridges with insufficient gussets
You should check out the crazy 8s runaway train incident. Would love to hear your take on it
Absolutely preventable. But, to prevent it would have required a smarter design and maintenance evaluation regime. Third-party review of the initial design, at the very least, would have been necessary. Likewise, external review of maintenance processes and thei consequences would likely have been required.
All of that is expensive, and it's clear that cost-savings was always at the core of discussion around the design and maintenance of this (and many other) bridges.
Absolutely love this channel, and THANK YOU for having a closed captions option.
Another great vid John! Cheers.
Thank you
I was minutes from being on it when it came down. I had just pulled up to Bobbi and Steve’s to get gas. My friends wife was also injured on it.
Lmao literally right next to it
Hello 👋 Melanie how are you doing and i hope you’re having a wonderful weekend.?
Amazing work once again!
Thank you!
The one issue I have here is the lack of mention of Minnesota’s temperature fluctuations. Many other comments have pointed it out, but the gist is it’s very hot and humid in the summer and so cold in the winter, the cities built sky bridges between buildings to avoid the cold.
I remember this day so vividly. My family was getting ready to watch the Twins game and all the sudden they cut to the news with all the footage of the collapse. It was such a surreal feeling to see our local disaster on every single national news channel and horrifying to think that we all drive over that bridge all the time. Years later in college, I moved into a building that is literally RIGHT next to the bridge (called The Bridges…ironically) so I got to know the area very well. Let me tell you, that drop off on the North side of the bridge is STEEP. It drops like 100-150 feet on a steep decline right away. I also later found out that my boyfriend’s dad was there that day and he ran down said decline to help people out of the river. Such an historic hometown tragedy for us that I will never forget. However, I will say it increased the safety of lots of other local bridges that were in WORSE condition that were being neglected. And the new bridge is absolutely beautiful…so I guess that helps…?
Funny how this gets recommended to me now with everything that just happened in Pittsburgh.
Like many in the comments, I'm also a Minnesotan, lived nearly my whole life in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis. I remember where I was when this happened. My family and I were moving into a new house, and were gonna be painting some of the rooms before moving in, so we went to a local Hirshfield's to look for paint.
Hello 👋 Dugan how are you doing and i hope you’re having a wonderful weekend.?
I remember when this was on the news. Bridges have always made me nervous…the bigger, the scarier. They had all the knowledge when they built it, but the bean counters do their best to recommend ways to save money. Since nobody was paying attention to how much weight had been added with concrete repairs and storage of materials (TWO cement trucks were on the bridge?!?!), it was an accident waiting to happen.
When you don’t learn from history, the story repeats. In Mexico a metro line bridge fall down do to low or no constant repairs and maintenance, even when the locals give constant reports of the big cracks of the bridge and strange sounds it made when the metro pass by. Inspectors ignored and eventually tragedy happens, women, man and children died that night.
I remember when this happened, I had an uncle who worked construction who was going to cross the bridge at the time of the accident but claims something told him to take another route.
It should also be noted that on the new bridge is a statue in the form of a wave on both ends indicating when you are actually crossing over the river. I still get chills whenever I happen to go over it.
If the DOT/NTSB still have any questions they should come here, apparently Plainly Difficult is able to summon in 4h every single person who was near the bridge or had driven over it just prior, in the comments.
Your explanation taking it all the way back to the failure to correct for the cheaper grade of steel back about 1965 was the best I’ve seen on this subject