Current Affairs

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Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. investigators are trying to determine why frequent inspections of a Minneapolis bridge failed to prevent the worst collapse in 25 years, as a fifth death was confirmed today.

Minnesota inspectors examined the Interstate 35W span yearly since 1993, and stepped up reviews this year, said Dan Dorgan, the state's bridge engineer. Yet the state concluded the structure didn't need to be replaced until 2020, he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board may recommend more rigorous U.S. bridge examinations after it researches a maintenance and inspection report on the Minneapolis bridge dating back to 2000, NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said.

``We will go line by line of that report to understand where the failures were,'' Rosenker told reporters yesterday in Minneapolis. Inspectors ``may well have been doing everything that is prescribed. That may well not be enough.''

The 40-year-old bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River during the evening rush hour Aug. 1, plunging an estimated 60 cars toward the water.

Five deaths are now attributed to the collapse, and eight people remain missing, Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek said at a news conference today. The fifth victim was a driver whose remains were taken from a truck that had burned, Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker said in an interview.

Recovery workers found no more bodies today, Stanek said at an afternoon news conference. Divers examined four submerged vehicles with no one inside, while a fifth couldn't be checked because it was crushed beneath another, he said.

Similar Bridges

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters recommended that states immediately inspect 756 similar steel truss bridges across the nation. Peters also asked her department's inspector general for a ``top-to-bottom'' review of the federal bridge inspection program.

The collapse was the worst bridge failure not caused by earthquakes or ship collisions since 1983, when a span of Interstate 95 fell into Connecticut's Mianus River, Peters said.

Three motorists were killed and three injured when a 100- foot section of the Greenwich bridge gave way. After an investigation, the NTSB said the bridge failed because of corrosion ``due to deficiencies in the state of Connecticut's bridge safety inspection and bridge maintenance program.''

The I-35W bridge, completed in 1967, was Minnesota's busiest, handling 141,000 vehicles a day near the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and University of Minnesota. Its absence will disrupt traffic patterns and may hurt the Minneapolis-St. Paul economy, said Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican.

Fatigue Cracks

After fatigue cracks and corrosion were found in 1990, the bridge was inspected annually, Dorgan said. The state began more detailed checks this year, following a three-year engineering study. The inspections had been halted for a construction project, under way at the time of the collapse, he said.

``We thought we were comfortable the bridge was fit for service,'' Dorgan said. ``We found that to be untrue.''

Rosenker said he was eager to review a video of the collapse obtained from a security camera. The find will cut months of time from the investigation, he said.

``This is going to show us what happened'' and ``where the failure began,'' said Rosenker, who compared the video's usefulness to that of a cockpit voice recorder in an aviation accident.

The probe will take almost a year to complete, he said.

Current Affairs

Minnesota Bridge Probe Focuses on Undetected Flaws..........