Rodent I don't know.  Hope she's alright.

I'm back - safe and sound.  I was not in town when the 35W bridge collapsed.  We are still in shock over what happened and grateful that the deaths and injuries were not any worse - they certainly could have been.  I did not know anyone that was on the bridge that day.  My son, however, up until 3 months ago, took that bridge every day to get to work and home and could very easily have been on it at that time. 

Hubby and I did have a wonderful time biking and camping on the North Shore of Lake Superior and northern Wisconsin.  (We did our best to avoid the heat and humidity!!).  We even had fun biking an inter-urban trail that was just inland of Lake Michigan, north of Milwaukee.  We came home to cool temps and rain - a nice change.

bikerbraid wrote on Aug 5^th, 2007 at 5:33pm:


I'm glad to hear you were not on that bridge. Are (or were) there really cyclists using that bridge as one report indicated? How is it affecting traffic in the area?

rodent wrote on Aug 7^th, 2007 at 11:26pm:


No - the bridge that collapsed was an interstate bridge with no walkway.  However, there is a road underneath that bikers and cars were on and some of the bridge debris landed very close to that road.  No one was hurt there.  All the injuries were related to the freeway bridge.  They are still trying to locate 8 missing people and are assuming they are in the river.  Yesterday they discovered another car, buried under the debris, but there were no bodies in it.  They think they may still find more cars that they were unaware of before.  The recovery started yesterday.  They will slowly remove each of the cars, then bridge parts.  We have soooo many people involved in this, they have closed off a road for all the trailers used by the people involved.  We have the FBI, Navy, Coast Guard, State Police, County Sherriffs from 3 counties, Minneapolis police and several independent investigators involved in this. 

Traffic is a mess, but not as bad as most of us expected.  They have turned a highway that had stoplights on it into the main detour and have blocked all cross traffic on the highway and reclassified it an interstate.  This helps immensely.  But considering our "rush hour" (that lasts 4 hours) was a mess before, this certainly has not helped.  The city busses are running free routes from some designated park & rides that are trying to keep people from driving into the downtown area - apparently that is working well.  (An who knows - maybe some people will figure out that mass transportation isn't so bad after all and keep riding the busses!).  An encouraging note - initial discussions on the replacement bridge are to widen it (more lanes) and add pedistrian/bike lanes!!!  Whoo hoo!  Having another river crossing for bikes so close to downtown and the University would be fantastic.