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multimedia blog Videos: Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Various sources, Friday, August 3rd, 2007 A selection of You Tube videos of the August 1st Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse, with a focus on amateur video shot by residents of the Twin Cities. Includes the security camera footage of the bridge falling, raw local news coverage taken from the air by WCCO, and Google maps showing the location of the bridge in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. As of later today, 6 dead, 8 missing, 111 injured. Maps
Security camera footage of the collapse Raw footage from WCCO, taken from the air Amateur video: From an adjacent bridge Amateur video: Taken from the triage center Amateur video: Police removing onlookers from an adjacent bridge Amateur video: Underneath the bridge It's hard to know what to say about the likelihood that this disaster could have been prevented. On one hand, we have a punishing climate here, with hot summers and freezing winters. Potholes can be seen everywhere on the roads after winter. On the other hand, since the disaster, it has emerged that many bridges and highways in the United States have been poorly maintained because of lack of funds. WCCO reports that "More than 1,000 bridges in Minnesota and more than 70,000 bridges across the country are rated structurally deficient, like the span that collapsed in Minneapolis, and engineers estimate repairing them all would take at least a generation and cost more than $188 billion." The U.S. Census Bureau admit that almost 40 million people, including 12.9 million children, live under the poverty line in America. Somewhere in the region of 11% of the population go to bed hungry each night. Is it not painfully obvious by this point that spending billions of dollars on dubious wars abroad, while many basic and desperate needs remain unmet at home, is no way to run a healthy society? People need help. Stuff needs to be fixed. What other priorities could possibly be more important than these? Related Links More From This Section  • Elliot Hughes, a young protester tortured during the RNC by a dozen cops in a dark room in the Ramsey County Sheriff's jail, testifies at a special "Community Conversation about the RNC" at the St. Paul City Council (Thursday, September 25th, 2008)  • Art: Alex Lilly photos and protest posters from the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN (Sunday, September 21st, 2008) • "Hockey Mamas for Obama": Anchorage Demonstration by Alaska Women Reject Palin (Saturday, September 20th, 2008) • "Rage against the machine", R.N.C. Diary (part 3) (Friday, September 5th, 2008) • "Police and technology", R.N.C. Diary (part 2) (Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008)
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