I-35W Mississippi River Bridge Collapse and the G/P Phenomenon

About 6:05 p.m. central daylight time on Wednesday, August 1, 07, the eight-lane, 1,907-foot-long I-35W Highway Bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, experienced a catastrophic failure in the main span of the deck truss. As a result, 1,000 feet of the deck truss collapsed, with about 456 feet of the main span falling 108 feet into the 15-foot-deep river. A total of 111 vehicles were on the portion of the bridge that collapsed. Of these, 17 were recovered from the water. As a result of the bridge collapse, 13 people died, and 145 people were injured. On the day of the collapse, roadway work was underway on the I-35W Bridge, and four of the eight travel lanes (two outside lanes northbound and two inside lanes southbound) were closed to traffic. In the early afternoon, construction equipment and construction aggregates (sand and gravel for making concrete) were delivered and positioned in the two closed inside southbound lanes. The equipment and aggregates, which were being staged for a concrete pour of the southbound lanes that was to begin about 7:00 p.m., were positioned toward the south end of the center section of the deck truss portion of the bridge and were in place by about 2:30 p.m. About 6:05 p.m., a motion-activated surveillance video camera at the Lower St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam, just west of the I-35W Bridge, recorded a portion of the collapse sequence. The video showed the bridge center span separating from the rest of the bridge and falling into the river." ²
Martin P. Burke Jr., PE

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