Investigating the collapse of Minnesota's busiest bridge by Ana Maria Ciobanu

Last week the bridge which connected the center of Minneapolis with the University of Minnesota collapsed into the Mississippi River. Dozens of cars fell into the water and at least five persons were killed and fifty are seriously injured. Till now there are no information about why the bridge collapsed but the authorities removed the possibility of a terrorist attack. Technology is now coming to help people recreate the scene of events and find the cause of this dreadful catastrophe. Advanced software will help recreate the disaster and determine the exact piece of bridge that gave way. This is a clear sign if technology evolution because 40 years ago, experts had to put the pieces of a fallen bridge back together to determine what went wrong. Ted Galambos, a professor emeritus of structural engineering at the University of Minnesota declared: "Computers and modeling techniques are just light years from what was available 40 years ago." The dive recovery teams are benefiting from technological help and using underwater video cameras to search under dangerously unstable debris. With all this artificial help, experts have stated that they're going to need 18 months to complete their highly demanding investigation on why Minnesota's busiest bridge collapsed and fell into the river on the first day of August. The bridge was built in 1967; it was 580 meters long and 20 meters high. Over 200.000 vehicles transited the bridge every day. It was last checked in 2006 and the reports didn't detect any structural problems.

by Ana Maria Ciobanu for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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