NY Times, LA Times, others: Early idea why the bridge went down

Published: August 3, 2007, 12:49 pm

After the horrifying sight of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis unzipping itself and collapsing into the Mississippi, carrying a rush hour traffic load with it, we will be reading a good deal about single-point failures, structural redundancies, engineering reviews, and improved inspection. With literally thousands of stories running it is pointless to try to find all those with a strong technical theme, but a sampling of larger national outlets, and the major local dailies, have several stories that do well considering how soon after the fact they are out: Stories: LA Times Ralph Vatabedeian, Nicholas Riccardi call the now-fallen bridge a “house of cards” ; NY Times Matthew L. Wald, Kenneth Chang mention its flaws as including a potential for single-failure catastrophe but without much elaboration. Mainly it’s on the difficulty of spotting specific failures as they approach; Minneapolis Star Tribune Laurie Blake, Paul McEnroe, Tony Kennedy on specific preventives

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