Increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of recovery efforts, families of the missing in Wednesday's Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minnesota seemed heartened by a brief visit to the disaster site late on Saturday.
They also saw why it has been so hard for search crews to find bodies amid the fallen ruins of the eight-lane bridge, a Red Cross official said.
After the visit, "they had a better depth of understanding of ... the challenges that the rescuers are facing now that they've seen it first hand," said Melanie Tschida, a Red Cross spokeswoman.
PHOTO: AFP
"That has been one of the ongoing frustrations all along -- the lack of information and just the kind of endless wait of getting answers," she said.
The families were bused to the scene as divers were wrapping up a third fruitless day of searching for missing victims, finding no bodies inside a crushed car pulled from the bottom of the Mississippi River.
The search was scheduled to resume yesterday.
An interfaith service with songs and prayers for the victims of the collapse was set for 7pm yesterday. Money raised will be distributed to victims' families.
The official death toll stands at five.
Police late on Saturday released an official list of eight people still missing.
But police also cautioned that the number could still rise because it is possible some victims have not been reported missing. Investigators have names that haven't been connected to the bridge and divers and recovery workers have found license plate numbers that don't belong to an identified missing person or survivor.
Among the newest names added to the list were those of Vera Peck and her son, Richard Chit, who were in the same car.
Family members said Richard Chit had Down's syndrome and was virtually inseparable from his mother.
"One of them wouldn't survive without the other so maybe that's just the way it's supposed to be," sister Caroline Chit told MSNBC through tears.
The other six missing are Scott Sathers, 29, who worked at Cappela University, an online school; Christine Sacorafas, 45, who taught Greek folk dancing classes; Greg Jolstad, 45, a construction worker who was operating a skid loader on the bridge; Peter Hausmann, 47, a computer security specialist; and pregnant Somali immigrant Sadiya Sahal, 23, a nursing student, and her two-year-old daughter, Hanah.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the