With only a single body recovered from the Mississippi in a frustrating day of searching on Thursday, the families of the 20 to 30 people still missing after a bridge collapsed here maintained an anxious vigil.
By day's end, the four bodies recovered in the hours following the accident on Wednesday had been identified.
Shock and grief turned to anger and blame as reports surfaced that officials had warned as early as 1990 that a bridge which collapsed over the Mississippi had serious structural problems.
"This really should be a wake up call for America," Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid told reporters in Washington. "We have infrastructure that is deteriorating and deteriorating."
The structural problems with the Interstate 35 bridge were so severe that state officials considered bolting steel plates to its supports to prevent cracking in fatigued metal, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported yesterday.
They decided against it out of fear that the bolts would weaken the bridge and a fresh inspection was delayed by unrelated repairs to the driving surface.
Meanwhile, more than 70,000 bridges across America 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 US$188 billion.
That works out to at least US$9.4 billion a year over 20 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The bridges carry an average of more than 300 million vehicles a day.
It is unclear how many of the spans pose actual safety risks. Federal officials alerted the states late on Thursday to immediately inspect all bridges similar to the Mississippi River span that collapsed.
There are 756 such steel-deck truss bridges, according to highway officials. No list of bridge locations was available.
In a separate cost estimate, the Federal Highway Administration has said addressing the backlog of needed bridge repairs would take at least US$55 billion.
That was five years ago, with expectations of more deficiencies to come.
It is money that Congress, the federal government and the states have so far been unable or unwilling to spend.
"We're not doing what the engineers are saying we need to be doing," said Gregory Cohen, president of the American Highway Users Alliance, an advocacy group representing a wide range of motorists.
"Unfortunately when you consistently underinvest in roads and bridges ... this is the dangerous consequence," Cohen said of Wednesday's deadly Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minneapolis. He said engineers have estimated US$75 billion a year is needed just to keep highways and bridges from further deterioration, but that only around US$60 billion a year is being provided.
A bridge is typically judged structurally deficient if heavy trucks are banned from it or there are other weight restrictions, if it needs immediate work to stay open or if it is closed. In any case, such a bridge is considered in need of considerable maintenance, rehabilitation or even replacement.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The