page_title: I-35W Mississippi River bridge
section_title: Recovery
hierarchical_section_title: I-35W Mississippi River bridge / Collapse / Recovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter tours the site of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse site.
context_page_description: The I-35W Mississippi River bridge was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Saint Anthony Falls of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The bridge opened in 1967 and was Minnesota's third busiest, carrying 140,000 vehicles daily. It had a catastrophic failure during the evening rush hour on August 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The NTSB cited a design flaw as the likely cause of the collapse, noting that a too-thin gusset plate ripped along a line of rivets, and additional weight on the bridge at the time contributed to the catastrophic failure.
  Help came immediately from mutual aid in the seven-county Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area and emergency response personnel, charities, and volunteers. Within a few days of the collapse, the Minnesota Department of Transportation planned its replacement with the I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge. Construction on the replacement bridge completed quickly, opening on September 18, 2008.
context_section_description: Recovery of deceased victims took over three weeks. At the request of the NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker, the U.S. Navy sent 17 divers and a five-person command-and-control element from its Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit TWO. Divers and Underwater Search Evidence Response Team from the FBI joined the response efforts on August 7, bringing with them truckloads of specialized equipment including FBI-provided side-scan sonar and two submarines.
  The Navy Dive team started diving operations in the river at 2 a.m., within hours of arriving, and conducted operations around the clock for the next three weeks, until the recovery portion of the mission was completed. The FBI teams had planned to search with an unmanned submarine, but had to abandon this plan after they found it was too big to maneuver in the debris field and cloudy water. Minneapolis Police Captain Mike Martin stated that, "The public safety divers are trained up to a level where they can kind of pick the low-hanging fruit. They can do the stuff that's easy. The bodies that are in the areas where they can sweep shore to shore, the vehicles that they can get into and search that weren't crushed. They were able to remove some of those. Now what we're looking at is the vehicles that are under the bridge deck and the structural pieces."
  Seventy-five local, state and federal agencies were involved in the rescue and recovery including emergency personnel and volunteers from the counties of Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Olmsted, Ramsey, Scott, Washington, Winona, and Wright in Minnesota; and St. Croix County, Wisconsin, St. Croix EMS & Rescue Dive Team, and others standing by. Federal assistance came from the United States Department of Defense, DHS, USACE and the United States Coast Guard. Adventure Divers of Minot, North Dakota, is a private firm who assisted local authorities.
  Local businesses donated wireless Internet, ice, drinks and meals for first responders. The Salvation Army canteens served food and water to rescue workers. Teams of officers were sent to hospitals to follow up with the injured, who had been transported to eight different medical facilities.
  The Minneapolis Police Chaplain Corps Chaplain Director, Dr. Jeffrey Stewart, arrived and was asked to set up and manage a Family Assistance Center (FAC) for the victims' families. He coordinated site location and staffing arrangements with the city's Department of Health and Family support and relevant Hennepin County offices. When Chaplain Supervisor John LeMay and Lead Chaplain Linda Koelman arrived on the scene, they assisted in setting up the FAC at the Holiday Inn by 8 p.m. As additional Minneapolis Police Chaplains arrived, they began providing services to the victim families, assisting them in locating family members, and providing a calm presence. On August 20, the last victim was recovered from the river.
  A Mayo Clinic transport helicopter was standing by at Flying Cloud Airport. The Minnesota National Guard launched a MEDEVAC helicopter and had up to 10,000 guard members ready to help.
  As of August 8, 2007, more than 500 Red Cross volunteers and staff persons counseled 2,000 people with grief, trauma, missing persons, and medical issues, and served 7,000 meals to first responders.
  Following the initial rescue, Mn/DOT retained Carl Bolander & Sons, an earthworks and demolition contractor of Saint Paul, Minnesota, to remove the collapsed bridge and demolish the remaining spans that did not fall. Divers left the water briefly on August 18 while the company's crew used cranes, excavation drills and cutting torches to remove parts of the bridge deck, beams and girders, hoping to improve access for the divers. After the last person's remains were removed from the wreckage on August 21, the company's crews began dismantling the bridge's remnants. Crews first removed the vehicles stranded on the bridge. By August 18, 80 of the 88 stranded cars and trucks had been moved to the MPD impound lot where owners could claim their vehicles. Then workers shifted to removing the bridge deck using cranes and excavato
caption: In the center, Donald C. Winter, former Secretary of the Navy, views the I-35W bridge collapse site. To the left is Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.
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