Minneapolis - Checking in alive.
 

If anyone's been watching news tonight & saw the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed and was wondering if I'm okay, I am. I drive on that bridge any time I go to Minneapolis (which is a lot), but I was at work tonight when it happened. Monalisa, you weren't on 35W tonight were ya?

If anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, here's the story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070802/...ridge_collapse


To summarize, a 4 lane wide, several hundred yard section of a MAJOR freeway bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River right in the middle of downtown Minneapolis tonight at about 6:05 pm (Towards the end of rush hour.) This is about a 30 minute drive from my current residence, but less than 10 minutes from some of my old houses.

Cool you're ok, horrible that happened.

Thanks bwind, I was gonna post something and ask if you were OK, and any other of our little ghoulies from this neck of the woods, so I'm glad you did. This was actually about 3.5 miles from where I live, but thankfully I wasn't there today. So far my family and friends that I've checked with are all OK too. Very scary shit, this reality stuff.

Not sure if this link will work, but here are some pictures....

http://www.slide.com/r/qlva0Mc80D8Fs...03158301741825

Glad to hear you are all well. That's some terrifying shit right there.

I'm glad your all okay.I wish to all the families that lost someone,the best.

Thanks everyone.

The news is gonna get a lot more grim today. Evidently, there were people pinned under concrete & partially under water that the rescue worker were able to get to, but not able to get out. At least 2 people died pinned in their cars after hours of rescue work trying to get them out. I have a cousin that's a Highway Cop that works that area. She was one of the first two police on the scene. She said there were a lot more than 50 cars on the bridge (evidently the media only knows about 50) that went in the water and she expects the death count to rise pretty dramatically. Apparently there are a lot of cars crushed beneath submerged concrete that they cant even really access yet at this point.

A lady where I work was on the bridge when it collapsed and went into the river. She had a car with manual windows, so she rolled down the window, climbed out and swam to safety. I don't know her, so I didn't talk to her personally, but that's what others there are saying.

A guy I work with was on a bridge that is very near the 35W bridge when it collapsed and saw it happen. Very frightening!

Here's a video of it collapsing...http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/....side.view.cnn

and some more pictures...http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/02/bri...rpt/index.html

I still can't believe this happened.

I passed the word along to CWA that you're alive, hope you don't mind.

Cool. I'll pop in and say hey.