01x02 - Rush Hour Disaster

[bunniefuu]

[ Beeping ]

Man: 421410 E-Tech number one.

Fire and police, there's a bridge collapse.

Woman: Apparently this bridge went down.

We're going to be starting a couple other trucks.

Babineau: The 35W Bridge, it's eight lanes of constant traffic all day long.

Man: We're going to need rescue all up and down the bridge on both sides.

Ward: It was inconceivable that a bridge would just collapse. bridges aren't supposed to fall down.

Breaking news right now --

We've just heard about a bridge collapse.

Walz: I heard a snap.

Karge: My car did a 70-foot nosedive.

Schueller: All I saw was a cloud of dust.

Man: The entire bridge is in the water.

The 35W Bridge is in the water.

I looked up and I could see the roadways going up and up.

I screamed and swore and waited to die.

Man: Start some ambulances down here.

We have a lot of victims out here.

All I could think about was my first child coming in two weeks.

Woman: I'm looking at a school bus right now in the middle of it all.

Ward: The whole bridge had collapsed.

You can't comprehend that that would happen.

It was just like a scene out of a horror movie, but it was real.

Walz: We have a lot of bridges in this town because we're constantly going over the Mississippi River.

Every, you know, mile or two there's a bridge.

I took the 35W Bridge to and from work, so I traveled it at least twice a day.

It was a major artery and a place that I traveled over a lot in my years living in Minneapolis.

August 1, 2007, I was at my job where I worked with young people who lived in a group home.

That summer there was construction on the bridge.

I had thought about the bridge construction as I headed home that day, and throughout the summer I kind of just thought about what time of day it was and what the traffic might be like to decide my route, and so I had debated taking a different route that day that would kind of veer me off of dealing with the construction traffic.

But my first opportunity to do that I was -- still had my head in the clouds a little bit about work and missed the exit.

I just kept crawling along with everybody else and got to the last exit before the bridge, and my mind said, you know, take that exit, snake through the city, you'll get home faster.

But it was bumper-to-bumper traffic, and I was in the left-hand lane.

I would have needed to merge over, so I just stuck with it.

Babineau: That day when I left work, I was on my way home.

I was excited to go home.

I hadn't been home in a few days from traveling from here to there.

My fiancée and I were expecting to have our first baby.

We were looking for a house.

It was hectic but it was good at the same time, and we were happy.

Man: Well, it's gonna be a beautiful sunny day today.

We can expect much more of the same over the next few days.

[ Radio chatter ]

All day long we were working, and we were sweaty, and it was 90 degrees out, 95 degrees out.

When I got in my truck, I took my cellphone and wallet out of my pockets, put them on my center console.

I took my shirt off, thinking I'm going to be home in 20 minutes.

[ Engine turns over ]

I had to go through Minneapolis, and I had to go over the 35W Bridge.

It's the bridge that goes over the Mississippi River.

It's eight lanes of constant traffic all day long.

It's a bridge that just everybody goes over.

If you've ever been to Minneapolis for more than a couple days you've traveled over this bridge.

I had my windows down, just listening to music, day is done, I'm happy, and coming into Minneapolis there was road construction on the bridge.

Hot enough for ya?

I tell ya, can't b*at the view, though.

Ringate: After 4th of July weekend, 2007, I started working on the 35W Bridge.

At that point I had been working on bridges for five years.

I was working...

14-to 18-hour days, seven days a week on that project.

August 1st, I showed up for work at 6:00 in the morning.

There was probably about 30 of us on the job site.

We'd have to pour concrete at night because it was always so hot.

So we'd work all day and then we'd wait until dark, and it would cool off, and then we'd work most of the night.

We were just getting set up to pour concrete, and I was sitting on a piece of construction equipment, moving it out of the way.

My colleague was standing right next to me, like two feet away from me, and we were talking.

And then the bridge, like, hopped up and down.

Babineau: I was just getting onto the bridge.

They had two lanes of each direction shut down, so the traffic was moving very slow, 5, maybe 10 miles an hour.

And that's when it started to fall.

[ Rumbling ]

Schueller: I usually leave work a little after 5:00, and I was on my usual bike ride home.

I remember it was an extra hot day.

There's a hill that approaches the 35W Bridge, and then the bike trail goes right underneath the bridge.

I was pedaling and looking down at the pavement ahead of me when I just heard a loud cr*ck.

Just one cr*ck like a big--

Like if you took a huge piece and just snapped it.

And it was the weirdest sound I had -- I had ever heard.

The first thought in my head was, wow, someone's filming a movie.

[ Laughs ]

I mean, I couldn't even grasp that something really bad happened.

Babineau: Coming into Minneapolis, there was road construction on the bridge, and they had, I think, two lanes of each direction shut down, so the traffic was moving very slow.

You could hear big rumbling noises.

It sounded kind of like there was a train going over the bridge, to me.

It was really difficult to comprehend what was happening.

It's like the ground came out from beneath us, and now we're falling.

All the cars are falling.

I can see out my windshield, and I can see the bridge going down and all the cars going down with it.

There's nothing you can do.

You know, you know what's happening, but it's difficult to comprehend, and it takes a few seconds for it to sink in and realize that the whole bridge is -- is collapsing.

It was loud.

I mean, it was...

I don't know what it was.

All of a sudden it felt like I was on a roller-coaster ride, going down the big hill on a roller coaster, and I looked up, and I could see the roadway just going up and up.

I was like, screaming, like...

But I mean, you couldn't hear anything because it was so loud.

The bridge deck was 116 feet off the river.

I thought for sure once we hit the water that we were all dead.

The nose of my truck pointed down.

I was holding onto my steering wheel, and I just grasped it tighter...

My face ended up smashing into the steering wheel, and I had a little -- It cut the bridge of my nose, and my hands came off the steering wheel and hit the dashboard.

It was kind of like a head-on collision, and then my truck dropped back down and the back of it came down and slammed down onto the piece of concrete and whipped me backwards.

[ People screaming ]

As soon as I stopped and my truck wasn't in motion anymore, I thought my back may had been broken.

And I did what you would do when you see TV shows.

You wiggle your toes.

When it landed, I was knocked unconscious because I hit my head, but I just remember being soaking wet with the water.

It was like a tidal wave of water.

All I saw was a cloud of dust.

Kind of like when you see the 9/11 picture of the cloud of dust going down the street.

When it hit me I couldn't see anything.

It was just a whiteout.

I was quite confused at that point.

And then I couldn't see anything still, so I gradually went through that cloud of dust until I got right up next to the bridge.

And then once I got close, that was the point I could start seeing.

Seeing what was up ahead.

Babineau: The dust was very heavy.

[ Coughs ]

I could see the whole bridge going down when it fell.

Now I can't see halfway across the bridge.

[ Screaming continues ]

[ Coughs ]

Oh, my God.

The next thing I knew I was in the river.

Half laying on the bridge deck and half in the water.

[ Screaming and siren wailing in distance ]

And there was just people screaming everywhere and this mass chaos.

It was just like a scene out of a horror movie, but it was real.

Schultz: The I-35W Bridge connects one part of Minneapolis to another part across the Mississippi River.

It was a bridge that constantly was carrying a large amount of traffic --

And not just during rush hour in the morning and the evening.

I crossed the bridge every day on my way to work and on my way home from work, whether it rained, whether it shined, whether it was jammed with traffic.

It was a very important way to get from one part of Minneapolis to the other.

There was a large amount of construction work going on on the bridge.

There were lanes closed, and there was the usual pileup of traffic.

It never really crossed my mind that the I-35W Bridge would someday fail us.

Walz: I left work and started to make the trip back into Minneapolis.

It was bumper-to-bumper traffic, and so I just kept crawling along with everybody else.

I made it to about the middle of the bridge when I heard a snap, a beam, a clank --

It was a very distinct sound of metal just snapping in half and I was in an immediate free fall.

[ Screaming ]

I screamed and swore and waited to die.

I didn't think that there was any other conclusion.

Babineau: For a few moments, a few seconds, the dust was --

It was very heavy.

[ Coughs ]

Oh, my God.

[ Sighs ]

I remember opening my door to get out of my truck, and before I could step foot out of my truck, I could hear what was screeching tires, and they were coming from above me.

[ Tires screeching ]

[ Crashing ]

Probably seven, eight, nine feet above me was another piece of bridge that was at such an incline that the cars were sliding off of it.

[ Crashing continues ]

[ Screaming ]

I don't remember hitting the water.

I just remember hitting the bottom of the river.

[ Muffled screaming ]

Like, what do I do, like -- what?

What can I possibly do to get out of this?

Like, I'm not Superwoman. [ Laughs ]

You know, I'm not --

Like this is not a situation that I can get out of, and yet I have to.

[ Screams ]

I knew how far away I was from anyone, and I knew that I would be dead before anyone got to me, so I was the only one that was gonna get myself out of this situation.

I unbuckled my seatbelt, and I, you know, I started to kind of float and push.

And...

I don't know.

All I could think was to push.

Just push.

And I pushed and pushed on every surface, and then my body started to gasp for air.

I got as low as I could because I was worried that a car was gonna fall off that incline and fall onto my truck.

I waited, and then I got up, quickly opened my door and got out of my truck.

The box of my truck was actually over the edge in a pit.

That's where the cars were falling into.

I remember looking up, and the only car left was the one that was right above my truck.

Why is that the one that didn't fall?

All I could think about was...

My first child coming in two weeks.

And...

[ Sighs ]

It was the scariest thought I've ever had.

I thought I was gonna die --

Or I could have d*ed and not even met my first child, which at the time we didn't know if it was a boy or girl.

I thought that I wouldn't have the chance to even know that, if...

If it was my son or daughter.

We gotta get off the bridge.

All right.

[ Screaming in distance ]

[ Muffled screaming ]

Walz: I gasped and I gasped five or six times, and, during those five or six times, like, I knew that each time that I was gasping that that was one second less that I had left of life and that, you know, I had to transition away from, like, figuring out how to get out to just accepting that this was it, this was -- this was my grave.

This was where I would be found, that I would be one of the people found.

[ Beeping ]

Man: 421 and 410.

500 and Second Street, Southeast.

The bridge collapsed.

Ward: I'm at work close to the end of my shift, and I'm hurrying up to try to get the shift schedule together and all the stuff to hand off to my relief.

And a call came from the dispatcher over the radio saying that some kind of a bridge had collapsed.

There was a great amount of confusion.

We didn't really know what bridge had collapsed.

Woman: We're gonna be starting a couple other trucks.

Apparently this bridge went down.

We have construction workers, cars all over, and people in the water as well.

Yeah, okay. We got a call coming in.

Johnson: My partner and I were kind of curious as to what was going on, and all of a sudden we heard one of our rigs get dispatched to a potential bridge collapse.

Woman: 41 near Tech one.

We're gonna be starting a couple other trucks.

I called my wife, and I told her that you might want to turn on the TV because I think there's something going on with a bridge collapse in north of Downtown Minneapolis.

Man: EMS Command to 400 on Epack one.

I don't know how much --

The rest of the bridge is down.

We probably have a lot of people in the river.

Which bridge?

There's a pedestrian bridge just north of 4th Street.

I want at least three, four more trucks assigned to this call, if we can have them.

This is huge.

I heard on the radio one of our paramedics say, "I need you to send all available ambulances.

This is the 35W Bridge.

It has collapsed into the river.

And I didn't even get dispatched.

I just started heading that way.

[ Siren wails ]

[ Birds chirping ]

[ Man speaking indistinctly ]

I had this idea about what kind of blocks we could use instead of wooden blocks.

He's not going to be traveling nearly as much with this new position.

That will be nice.

It'll be good for little man to have him around more often.

Me too.

Nichole: My husband Karge had been out of town for work, and he had called me earlier in the day and said, "I'm gonna be home at this, you know, around 6:00."

I said, "I'm gonna be at my mom's with little man.

Why don't you meet us there."

My mom was in the middle of making dinner, my son had just woken up from a nap.

I was in the midst of just appeasing a little cranky 15-month-old, so that's we turned on a DVD for him to watch.

Holy smoke stacks!

It probably takes a lot of bricks to make a layout like this.

Man #2: That's right, Bob.

[ Toy squeaking ]

In the middle of it, I got this sick feeling.

Something's weird.

Could you turn off the DVD?

Huh?

We need to turn on the television.

Okay.

Sounds cool! Let's have some fun!

Newscaster: Want to get more on that breaking news right now, a bridge collapse we're told about on 35W.

We have Amelia Huffman right now with Minneapolis police on the phone.

What can you tell us about what's happening out there right now?

Huffman: Well, at this point I don't have a whole lot of information for you because, as you said, this is just in progress now.

We have resources on the way to the scene.

We know that the bridge has collapsed, at least in part, and that there are cars in the water.

Newscaster: And we're talking about exactly what location?

Help us out with that.

Karge is on that bridge.

Karge took the 35W Bridge every day to get to and from work.

I just kind of fell over on my chair that I was sitting in, kind of like off to the side.

Woman: It's really a terrible scene.

I'm looking at a man right now being pulled off on a stretcher.

I'm also looking at flames.

I'm sure you guys can see that as well.

There are cars on fire right now.

Ken, can you hear us now as you're seeing what we're seeing?

My mom, she just kind of looked at me like I was crazy.

It's almost a surreal feeling like, I can't tell you why, I just know that I just felt like I needed to have the television on, 'cause I just knew that something awful had happened and my husband was a part of it.

And then at that point I look down at my phone, and I had four missed calls from him.

Newscaster: This, one of the main iconic bridges in the Twin Cities, has collapsed.

Cars in the water.

Ward: We had never practiced any kind of exercises or drills specifically around a bridge collapse.

What happens is it took out one of our principal ways of traveling across the river at the time when you really needed it.

And so just figuring out how to work around it became a big challenge for us.

[ Sirens wail ]

10-4, dispatch.

The best route is the 3rd Avenue bridge?

Yeah, we'll pop up by the park and cut down 6th.

Johnson: There was a secondary bridge they were asking us to go across, and it's a pedestrian bridge, which is just west of the 35W Bridge.

And so we're following that path to get onto that.

As we were getting closer to the scene, I remember looking to the right, and I remember seeing smoke, black smoke, heavy black smoke, on the south side of the bridge.

Turn right.

Dispatch is routing us left.

Turn right.

The last street that you'd have to turn, I told my partner to turn right.

Why I turned I have no clue.

I don't know why I turned.

I don't know.

'Cause we were the only ones that turned.

We were the only ambulance on the south side of the river.

Everyone else went to the north side of the bridge.

Woman: This is just in progress now.

We have resources on the way to the scene.

We know that the bridge has collapsed, at least in part, and that there are cars in the water.

I accepted that that was where I was going to die.

I said goodbye so that my family knew that I loved them, that I was thinking about them.

I felt peaceful, I felt at ease.

I felt...

Ready to go.

I waited for that moment, whatever that moment was like, whatever death is like, you know, I started to play the --

The ideas that people talk about in the movies --

The bright lights, the, you know, the floating sensation --

Those things that people describe death as.

I just started to wait for those things to happen.

When I was floating I felt like I was still alive.

I didn't know what death felt like, but I felt like I was still alive, so I kept kicking and realized that I was beyond the confines of my car and hoped that I was still alive and kicked to the surface.

Woman: What is it from your perspective, Ken?

Ken: All right. It's hard to --

I don't know where to start.

The entire bridge is in the water.

The 35W Bridge is in the water with cars.

Cars are in the water.

Looks like there's people down there as well.

Ringate: I was knocked unconscious briefly.

After I came to, I...Just got up.

[ Screaming in distance ]

My buddy that was -- just was two feet away from me and was talking to me, was about 50 yards upstream.

Hey.

Hey!

Hey, over here!

Grab this broom.

I pulled a few people out with that broom.

[ Chuckles ]

Walz: I kicked and I-I just hoped, and I reached the surface, and I gasped for air.

[ Gasping ]

Hey, over here! Grab this broom.

Grab the broom.

She was in the water, and the current was taking her downstream, and I was hollering at her, "grab onto this broom!"

You got it. Grab the broom.

Here you go.

I gotcha.

[ Coughing ]

You're all right. You're all right.

It's all right. You're all right.

Hey.

He saw me and he fished me out with a broom handle.

I had to, you know, climb and do this, like, Wonder Woman stuff.

Ringate: I pulled her up out of the water, and she was hurt pretty bad, from what I remember.

You're all right. I got you, okay?

Walz: I just remember, like, repeating, "I don't know how I got out of my car.

I don't know how I got out. I don't know how I got out."

Can you walk?

I think so.

I wasn't entirely sure that I was alive.

You know, like, what is this?

What is this experience that I'm having?

There was all kinds of chaos and noise above us.

There was helicopters, there were sirens, there was smoke.

There were, you know, just everything.

Woman: EMS Command, stand by.

45, repeat your traffic.

Man: It appears 35 has collapsed from University all the way across the river.

Ward: All we knew was that a bridge had collapsed, and typically you don't believe the worst in those sorts of situations.

You think, okay, maybe some cars had gone off the railing and made a mess and plunged into the river.

We'll get there and we'll figure it out.

85, be advised, all of 35 has collapsed over the river.

None of us had the idea that the whole thing would be collapsed down into the river gorge.

It was inconceivable that a bridge would just collapse.

Woman: Both ends of this bridge have collapsed on both directions.

There are actually cars on the top of the arch still sitting on top of the bridge.

There are cars on fire right now.

Newscaster: And this looks like a terrible, terrible scene.

Continue and tell us what you see.

Woman: It's really a terrible scene.

I'm looking at a man right now being pulled off on a stretcher.

I'm also looking at flames.

Nichole: Karge took the 35W Bridge every day to get to and from work.

I look down at my phone, and there were four missed calls, and they were all from him.

And I, at that point, was like, "Okay, I gotta get through to my voicemail."

The networks that day in Minnesota were crazy, trying to get through to your loved ones, to make sure -- were you on it? Are you okay?

Everyone trying to get a hold of everyone.

I picked up my phone to call, and I couldn't get through, and I couldn't get through.

So, finally I do get through to my voicemail, and it was all just sounds, but it was never once his voice.

In one of the voicemails I did hear body movement.

I heard, like, the scuffling of something, so I knew that the phone was in his car but his voice wasn't ever on those messages, which was almost worse.

At that point then, I put down my phone...

Starting having a really hard time because I just couldn't -- The panic that you feel, the overwhelming -- You're just --

The fear is so overwhelming.

[ TV chatter ]

The surreal feeling that you're in at that moment, like kind of almost like time standing still.

It's like what they do in the movies, and it actually is pretty accurate when you're in a situation like that 'cause it literally looks like time is standing still.

[ TV chatter continues ]

[ Siren wails ]

Johnson: We drove up, and at this point, we could see the bridge was collapsed, and we were the only ambulance on our side of the river.

I was the senior guy, but I didn't have my shoulder mic, so I told my partner, I said, "you're gonna have to be EMS Command."

Don, you're in command. Or on triage.

Okay.

I started looking for patients.

I remember seeing a ton of people there, and they were just --

They were running in all different directions.

We gotta get off the bridge.

All right.

Babineau: I could see on top of the bridge, and I could see across from where I was standing, and that's when you could hear the screams of a bus full of children.

Woman: I'm looking at a school bus right now in the middle of it all.

The flames are very close to that school bus.

There are cars on fire right now.

There's a lot of smoke coming up from the bridge.

Johnson: I could see the tail end of the school bus.

And my initial reaction was, "Was there kids on that bus?"

[ Children screaming ]

We have to go help those kids.

All right, everybody, go ahead.

In the summer of 2007 I was 11 years old, and I was going to Waitehouse Community Center.

It's a community center for an after-school program to keep children off the streets.

I spent the whole day at the wave pool.

After we were done swimming we all got onto the bus.

I sat in the middle of the bus.

I kind of like put my bag there so that nobody would sit in the seat with me, so then I could really stretch out.

The only thing I knew about the I-35, like, its purpose to me was just to get me to Bunker Beach and then get me back from Bunker Beach home.

Usually at the field trips, I'd fall asleep on the way back, so I didn't really know much about the roads or anything.

I have my head leaned against the window to the left, and then throughout the ride, it was pretty bumpy, so the window was, like, vibrating.

And then the road got a lot smoother, and so it got comfortable, and then I fell asleep.

[ Intro plays ]

Man: This is an ABC news special report.

Good evening.

I'm Martin Bashir here in New York.

We interrupt our program with breaking news from Minneapolis.

At just after 6:00 this evening, one of the busiest highway bridges in Minneapolis buckled and then collapsed into the Mississippi River.

Local television crews captured the scene from above as tons of concrete and cars were sent crashing into the water.

Ward: The whole bridge had collapsed into the river.

I mean, it's just -- you can't you can't comprehend that that would happen.

The sense of disbelief and awe was very much a part of the the response of pretty much everybody.

It was hard to--to grasp the magnitude of it.

Bashir: Eyewitnesses said that they heard a rumbling sound just as the bridge carrying Route 35 West began to fall.

All those disaster movies that you see, you know, at the movie theater, it was like that, but it wasn't -- It wasn't a movie theater.

Bashir: There are reports that a school bus carrying a school trip was approaching the bridge seconds before it collapsed.

But as yet, we have no precise figures on deaths or injuries or casualties.

On the south side of the bridge, there was fire, and next to the fire, there was a burning semi, was a school bus.

Woman: I'm looking at a school bus right now in the middle of it all.

The flames are very close to that school bus.

There are cars on fire right now.

Newscaster: One of the busiest highways in the Twin Cities collapses at the height of rush hour.

This scene is almost unimaginable.

When we pulled up to the scene, I could see the tail end of the school bus.

I don't hear the sirens, I don't hear --

I don't remember hearing people.

I don't remember, you know, the chaos that was going on around you, other than thinking about -- Where are those kids?

[ Indistinct shouting ]

Suddenly, like, I jolted awake.

Everyone was, like, screaming and stuff.

It was really loud.

I didn't really know what was going on.

My first thought was, like, what happened?

Was there an accident? Did we fall?

And so I looked out the window, and there were, like, really big cracks in the bridge, like the concrete was split, and like the bridge was, like, tilted to one side.

And then the cars were like --

Some of them were sideways, some were tilted, some were facing down like this.

[ Children screaming ]

I sat pretty still because I didn't want to, like, tilt the bus or something or tip over.

Some of the little kids, had like, blood on their faces, and then a few of the adults had, like, blood in their mouths coming out, or they had cuts and scrapes, and a lot of people had, like, blood running down their noses.

I think there were 50-some kids on this bus, and we needed to get them off because it looked like the bus was gonna fall off the edge of the bridge.

[ Siren wails ]

Child: We need help!

Hey, hey, hey.

Kanneh: One of the staff, he got up and he kicked the door, like two or three times.

Then the door finally swung open.

All right, y'all. Okay. Get down.

We're gonna help the kids off, all right?

Stay close, stay close.

The older kids, they got off the bus first with the staff, to make sure that they were able to help the smaller kids get off the bus.

I climbed up onto the bridge and started helping the kids off the back gate.

Some of them were crying.

Some of them looked like they had a broken arm or a broken ankle or they were bleeding a little bit.

Most of the kids, from what I remember, were just in shock.

I was very scared.

I didn't know what to do or what to say.

You got everyone?

All right, everybody. Stay close.

Babineau: Now there's kids standing on the bridge with really no way to get down.

I jumped down off of the bridge while a few other people kept getting the kids off the bus.

Stay close. Everyone okay?

Okay, okay.

So we're gonna go this way to get off. Okay?

I would tell the kids to -- to lean forward.

Kind of like they were gonna fall off the bridge, but I was right there to catch them.

Just right up there.

I'll catch you.

I had to reach up about 5 or 6 feet, and then I could get to the top of that retaining wall, and I would tell the kids to lean forward.

I was right there to catch them.

And most of them would lean forward right away.

Some of them were --

You could tell they were just so scared that they didn't know what to do.

That's when the sirens were getting louder and you could tell there was a lot of people on the way.

Now there were people coming to the bridge to help.

I went into my mom's room.

I was curled up on her bed, bawling.

"Just give me a sign that he's alive."

Like, "I just need something.

I need something to hold on to.

I can't keep going like this right now."

And then that's when I got this feeling that, you know, "go turn the TV back on, and you need to do it right now."

[ TV chatter ]

[ Laughs ]

I saw Karge! I saw him!

Nichole...

No, mom, he's alive. Look.

Look! There! There! [ Laughs ]

[ Sighing ]

"Thank you, God."

I just was hysterical 'cause I -- there he was.

My mom teared up at that point.

Clearly he was injured, but he wasn't dead.

You could tell he was kind of hanging onto his shoulder.

Someone was kind of helping him up, talking to him, walking with him, making sure he was okay.

Ward: You talk to the survivors, you talk to the rescue workers, and everybody talks about how many people were around early on helping.

We did not have enough people in the right place early on, and the area was flooded with bystanders.

The public response really bolstered the emergency response during the first half hour to an hour of the response.

Okay, come on.

There were several people helping, and everyone came together and we got the kids off of the bridge.

That's when the sirens were getting louder and you could tell there was a lot of people on the way.

Woman: It sounds like we have one morsel of good news out of this, which is that the students that were in that truck were taken out.

Rod, can you again verify that with your witness?

Rod: Gary, did you see the kids being taken off of that truck?

Gary: Yeah, out of the bus?

Yeah, I was -- I was -- We were carrying --

Me and a couple other guys were literally carrying them off the bridge.

There were some people handing the kids to us, and then we were catching the kids.

The police and the firemen and the paramedics, just -- I couldn't believe how fast they got there.

Everyone came together, and...

We knew we had to help these kids.

Walz: There was all kinds of chaos and noise above us.

There were helicopters, there were sirens, there was smoke.

I saw people on the northbound --

Northbound side who were just standing next to their cars.

They were talking on their phones.

They were clearly distraught, of course, but they were just like, they were there, and they weren't dead and they weren't bloody and they weren't, you know, they were injured in many ways but, like, just that they could be standing there was completely unbelievable to me.

At one point a woman in scrubs came up to me, and I, initially I thought she was someone there to help.

But it turned out that she had fallen as well.

It wasn't until that point that I even knew that I was bleeding.

I need a bottle of water and a towel.

She hollered across the median to the northbound lanes and asked for water or a towel, and...

That was -- that was a moment too that I won't forget because it was, you know, within seconds, there was a bottle of water and a towel flying across the median.

I don't know how I got out.

I don't -- I don't know how I got out.

Okay.

[ Gasps ]

I don't know how I got out.

Thank you.

Can I borrow your phone to call my fiancé?

Oh, thank you.

She cleaned me up, she let me use her phone.

I tried to call, and, um, I left a message.

Hey. I-I was just in a major accident on 35W.

The bridge collapsed.

My car's in the water. I, somehow, I got out.

But I just want you to know that I'm alive, and try to get a hold of you as soon as I can.

All right. I love you. Bye.

Thank you.

[ Breathing heavily ]

Johnson: So, we get out of the truck, and I remember seeing a Minneapolis Police officer carrying a woman up who was covered in blood.

Man: What do we got?

I think she broke her back.

Okay, stop right here. We're gonna lay her down.

Here we go. Here we go.

Good. How you doing?

Okay, Don, can I get a board?

And at the same time there was a gentleman walking up who was holding the side of his chest, and at this point I looked at his chest, and I knew that it was a really severe injury.

We're gonna need some help transporting these people to the Level 1 Trauma Center.

Just then, I saw a guy walk up with a girl.

Let's go right here. Lay down, lay down.

They were explaining to me that she was on the school bus.

What's your name?

Taquira.

Taquira, where's it hurt?

Right here.

Okay, anywhere else?

No.

Do you mind if I take a look here?

Okay.

I remember she wasn't crying, and, you know, I could talk to her.

I knew she needed to get transported out of there.

Were you on the school bus? Yeah?

Are there more?

We were the only ambulance on the south side of the river.

All right, gonna take a look here.

This point I looked at my partner to see if we have any ambulances coming.

All right.

I just knew I needed to get these people out of here now and prioritize who needed to go first.

400. Multiple patients. Triage is set up.

We need five more trucks.

Two, three. All right.

Look here. Keep your arms...

And just then a Minnesota state patrol car shows up with another ambulance...

That was from Mora, Minnesota.

How it happened I have no clue, how they came to us, and I remember walking up to the door.

I need your help. We have injured, and I need you to transport patients to the Level 1 Trauma Center.

I'll tell you exactly where to go, how to get there, and how to get back.

We need to move these people, and we need to move them now.

Okay.

All right.

One of the features that came out of this experience was how well all the different agencies worked together.

There were literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rescuers.

People just pulled together and really did the job.

Man: The center section of the bridge is down in the water.

It appears as though rescue crews have made it down in that area.

What you are witnessing is the challenging task of search and rescue teams, people helping those gone in the water, and are victims of this horrific event this afternoon.

Newscaster: We're getting wider sh*ts now of this bridge collapse.

We saw school buses. We saw a truck that's on fire.

Another rescue worker just on the right side of your screen with a backboard, looking to do whatever he can do.

Woman: Our chopper pilot has an excellent literal bird's eye view of what is going on here.

Can you add a little bit more to what we're seeing, Ken?

Ken: Yes, I can.

The center section of the bridge is down in the water.

It appears as though rescue crews have made it down in that area, trying to figure out a way to get the people off of it.

Cars are in the water.

A rescue boat has arrived on the scene right now.

Walz: They got me onto a backboard and hauled me over to get on a boat, and they brought me to the side of the river, the bank of the river.

We just thought it was the span over the river that had fallen until we got on that boat and went downstream and then saw the whole rest of the structure had collapsed.

It's like, "Oh, wow."

Walz: I was aware of the world in this weird way, like I knew that the world had kind of stopped.

It just felt like the world had just kind of stopped, for everyone.

There was a police officer that was near me, and he said, "you gotta get up the hill, you gotta get out of here. You can't be here."

[ Sirens wailing ]

It was difficult to leave that bridge area.

Excuse me, can I -- Can I borrow your phone?

You know, just to walk 50 feet away because I knew I was capable and, you know, physically I can still help.

Hello?

Yeah. I was in an accident.

35W.

Kanneh: After we got off the side of the bridge, they had us sit on the grass by the Red Cross.

Everybody was hurt, and there was a lot of people bleeding, and we were sitting there, and we didn't know what to do.

A lot of the kids my age had, like, minor injuries, like arm injuries, and some people like me had back injuries.

It was pretty tough to see, because for an 11-year-old kid, that's not something you think would happen, or could happen at any point.

Anytime that there's children involved, it takes it to a level you never want to be with.

I asked how they were doing.

You know, they all said "fine," but you knew deep inside they were --

They were wondering what had just happened.

I could tell the kids that they were gonna be okay.

And so I think it's important for them just to remain calm, and really in all reality, they were calm, they were the ones calming me down, I think, more than anything.

Till any local ambulance or paramedic crew showed up, we were the only ones on that south side.

It was where I was supposed to be, I guess.

Where my partner was supposed to be.

[ Siren wails ]

Newscaster: Right now rescue crews are still searching for victims on the banks of the Mississippi River.

We're seeing medevac helicopters flurrying about, which means there could be still victims still being taken to nearby hospitals.

Woman: A number of emergency crews continue to deal with this catastrophe.

People are still trying to connect with loved ones who could have been driving home from work when this bridge collapsed.

Nichole: Everybody was out looking for Karge Olson.

Nobody could find him.

Where is he? Where is my loved one?

Why isn't my husband, Karge --

Why hasn't anyone found him?

I don't get it, I don't understand.

Man: It collapses into the Mississippi River.

You see that sign.

To sit in that house and not do anything, I felt even more helpless.

The bridge was built in 1967. It is a fairly old bridge.

My dad is a U.S. marshal, and so he had, you know, all of the networks that he has between police officers that he knows and U.S. marshals that he knows --

Everybody was out looking for Karge Olsen.

Nobody could find him.

Man: Nichole.

Dad!

Have you heard from Karge yet?

No. Have you?

No, but don't worry. We're making phone calls.

I've got people at every hospital, and the Red Cross is helping coordinate with families.

I'll meet you there.

No, you'll get better information if you stay put.

I'm going!

With the bridge down, every route downtown is backed up.

Dad!

Nichole, listen to me.

What do you expect me to do, just sit here and do nothing?

No. Your son needs you there right now.

I think he knew, as soon as he dropped my kid card, that I would be glued to my seat.

I'll keep you updated.

[ Phone beeps ]

I was just surviving at that point.

I was just surviving.

Just trying to get through the next moment until I could actually physically see my husband.

Ward: From an EMS perspective, keeping track of all the people was a huge challenge because they were spread all over the area.

And that's why we know for a fact 50 people went by ambulance that night.

But another 25 went by private vehicle, some of them in pickup trucks that we actually helped load.

I was on a backboard, and I had my head strapped to the backboard.

Yeah, it was scary.

I was very terrified of any move, like, paralyzing me.

I ended up eventually getting slid into a truck, and I met another survivor.

"Hi, how are you? Can I hold your hand?"

And so we held hands to the hospital.

We're doing a secondary search of all the vehicles.

Hello?

Clear!

I actually just stood there for a minute, and I looked at the whole scene because this is the first time I actually got to take a look at the scene.

I was just overwhelmed with --

"this is crazy, this is insane."

I remember taking a walk towards the river, on the bridge, and there was a car right there, I'm standing there looking at the car --

I remember the bridge moaned.

[ Rumbling ]

And you could feel the bridge deck kind of shudder.

I describe it sometimes as like it's a death moan.

The bridge d*ed.

I was terrified. Never felt that before.

You don't really get a true perception of what that was like until you're standing on a bridge that moves, moans, that's broken.

And it's chaos all around you, vehicles on fire, you know.

At that point it's, "wow, this is real."

Woman: People are still trying to connect with friends and family who are just driving home from work or going somewhere when this bridge just gave way and fell into the river!

Woman #2: Red Cross volunteers have been on the scene.

They said that people have been showing up, they've been offering to give blood to help out.

They've been just offering their services in any way they can.

Nichole: We had the television on.

I don't remember really watching it.

I know it was on background noise.

I could hear it. I'm sure my mother was watching it.

Man: The focus once the sun comes up will be the recovery of any of the victims that are still there.

The hours after talking to my dad almost were the worst hours because at this point, okay, yes, now I know he's alive, I know he's not dead, I saw him on television --

Why the heck has no one found him?

[ TV chatter ]

[ Phone rings ]

Hello?

My dad called me around midnight and said, "We found him."

Hey, kiddo.

Daddy!

Wait! I need to talk to you.

What?

I just need you to be prepared.

Babe! What's going on?

What am I doing here?

You were on a bridge.

It collapsed.

What? No way. W-what bridge?

The 35W.

You were on your way to Mom's for dinner.

Babe! Hey, what's up?

What am I doing here?

As soon as your train of thought stopped, or we stopped talking it went --

Shoop! -- Right back to the beginning.

He had no ability to track.

It was very --

It was surreal.

I mean, it's, it's really odd to -- to see yourself like that.

Look down at yourself and see --

See the different injuries you have and the different medical gear you have on, and not remember it.

I drove on that bridge twice a day, five days a week for months, years.

August 1, 2007, I was up north working on a project for work.

I had been gone for two nights, so this was my third day away.

I would normally have been on that bridge at that time an hour earlier, but because I was up north, my schedule's a little different that day.

I dropped the company vehicle off.

I had to run into the office real quick.

And that's about the last thing I remember.

[ Chuckling ] What am I doing here?

I had a traumatic brain injury.

A pretty decent one.

My brain swelled and scared my family quite a bit, not knowing if I'd ever actually make a memory again.

Bashir: Good evening.

This is the scene of the tragedy outside Minneapolis tonight.

An eight-lane highway that carries over 100,000 cars a day collapsed into the Mississippi River at the height of rush hour.

Nichole: I remember very clearly while my husband was still sitting in the hospital, I grabbed the Star Tribune, and there's his car.

You're like, "Holy crap.

How are you -- How are you here?"

Karge: My car did a 70-foot nose dive.

The roof had collapsed in.

The engine block had come through.

All the windows were blown out.

It was just crumpled and crushed.

The only part of the car that didn't collapse was right above my head.

I have no memory of -- of the collapse.

I have no memory of how I got out of my car.

I cannot remember how I got to the hospital.

No one can account for where I was for six hours during something like a bridge collapse.

Woman: Again, you are looking at live pictures now of the aftermath of that bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

Crews back at work this morning on what they say sadly is a recovery mission now.

Man: The National Transportation Safety Board promised a full investigation to find out what exactly went so horribly wrong.

Ward: There were approximately 190 people on the bridge at the time it collapsed.

13 people d*ed.

We know that at least 145 people received either serious or minor injuries, and there was a report of over 30 people that they either have unknown injuries or didn't get hurt, hurt at all, which is just amazing.

Schultz: It was a very very shocking -- a very dramatic failure.

But why didn't this happen earlier?

The bridge had been in service since 1967.

Why in 2007? Why so many years afterwards?

It was a hot day.

The temperature had risen very quickly.

There was a large amount of construction work going on on the bridge.

We believe that the materials that were stockpiled on the bridge were one of the contributing factors.

First and foremost is that when it was designed and built, the actual gusset plates that hold all the girders together were thinner than they were supposed to be.

Schultz: It's not entirely clear why these gusset plates were built with thicknesses that were too small, approximately 1/2 as thick as they should have been.

There was a mistake made at some point.

Was it a design mistake? Was it a construction mistake?

I don't know if that will ever be known.

I was angry because I felt that we shouldn't even have been on that bridge doing that work.

My colleague was k*lled, and he was about 40 feet away from me.

A lot of my co-workers were --

A lot of 'em can't work ever again because of that.

A lot of them got hurt really bad.

It was a bad day.

Man: It was at rush hour that Minneapolis' most traveled bridge, the I-35W, collapsed without warning.

The massive bridge fell in three sections.

As many as 50 cars plunged into the Mississippi River below.

I realized that we're going --

The bridge is going down.

And it -- it just fell all the way down.

I'm just lucky I wasn't over the water.

A few days after the bridge had collapsed, I got a call from the White House, that the president wanted to meet with me at the site of the bridge.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

We talked for 20-25 minutes.

The bus was still there, and we were standing right next to it.

He just wanted to know everything about the collapse.

Met a man who was on the bridge, when it collapsed.

His instinct was to run to a school bus of screaming children, and to help bring them to safety.

Babineau: When President Bush walked up to me, he said, "Gary, I heard what you did, and I'm proud of you.

You're a hero."

It was the -- one of the greatest honors that I could receive.

I didn't feel like a hero.

I just felt like I did the right thing.

I watched a lot of heroes help other people on that bridge.

None of us put on this uniform to be a hero.

It's our job.

It's what we do.

It's what we do.

You know, it's just like you doing your job.

This is my job.

Can't believe seven years later it still affects me.

I struggled with PTSD for a long time and depression and all the things that go hand in hand with being in a traumatic...

Experience like this, I guess.

I've had 16 surgeries, I believe, related to the bridge over the last seven years.

There was a stint where I was averaging a surgery every 2 1/2 months.

Walz: I had a lot of survivors' guilt, and it's really hard to mourn for people that you didn't know when you were so close to being one of them.

To think about their death is to think about my own almost death.

And it took a long time for me to...

To grieve.

Schueller: I thought a lot about how, if I had hit one green light instead of a red light, or biked a little faster I'd have been squished under that bridge, without even knowing what happened.

It was odd too.

I thought, if I had been just a few seconds past it and with my music on, if I didn't hear anything, I might have kept biking and not even turned around.

I'd have been home and, before I even knew anything happened until I saw it on the news.

The collapse was a unique experience in that we were all complete strangers to one another, and five seconds before or five seconds after it would have been a completely different group of people.

[ Coughing ]

[ Siren wails ]

Johnson: I drove across that bridge every day, to and from work.

Why didn't it collapse when I was driving across it on my way home?

Why didn't it collapse when I was driving in that day?

You end up realizing your own mortality.

Nichole: It was just the bridge you always cross to get from one side of the river to the other side of the river, and when people find out that my husband was on the bridge, every story -- "I was just on that bridge.

I was crossing it earlier that day,"

'cause that's how central this bridge was to our city.

I have a really hard time sometimes talking about this because I know that there are people that didn't have the story that had, that there are 13 people that d*ed.

It's really hard to think about that that they didn't get that confirmation in the end that he actually --

Their loved one was actually there.

You know, to be able to heal.

For weeks some people wouldn't -- wouldn't drive across any bridge, or try to avoid all bridges.

They took it very personally.

Bridges aren't supposed to fall down.

Ringate: They immediately began removing the old bridge and began on the construction of the new bridge.

I worked on that project, and they worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week on that job until it was done.

I felt that the workers who were working on the old one should be involved building the new one.

I really felt drawn to go work on that project, so I got on there and I worked on it.

Gibson: A little more than a year after the deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis, a new bridge opened today.

It was August of last year when the I-35 West Bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River, k*lling 13.

The first time we crossed the new bridge we all held our breath. [ Laughs ]

I feel like that it's really the things that we've survived that have brought us to this point in time.

Karge: Life today is great.

Nichole and I just celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary, and I don't think we've ever been happier.

Our son is now, he's pushing 8 1/2 years old.

He starts third grade soon.

Nichole: Little man knows that his dad was part of something.

He knows he was in a really bad accident.

He's been able to see that bad things do happen, but you can also overcome them.

Kanneh: Everyone on the school bus survived, and, to my knowledge, everyone is doing pretty well.

The fact that the kids who were on this bridge they lost a part of themselves a little bit in the accident, it took away some of their childhood.

It really gave you, like, the idea that bad things happen but you should move on.

Walz: I am currently the founder and executive director of Courageous Hearts, which is my own non-profit.

You know, seven years later, I'm still finding ways that, like, I get glimpses of who I was before.

Just the other day I was laughing uncontrollably.

I was like, "Whoa. I haven't -- Haven't done that in a while."

So life is very different.

Took me a long time to physically recover and get back to work and everything.

To mentally recover took a lot longer.

I think I've finally put the pieces back together.

Babineau: Our baby was born 15 days after the bridge collapse, and it turned out to be a boy, Joseph Gary Babineau.

My wife and I have three kids now.

We've moved into a little bit bigger house.

And I'm so, so incredibly thankful that I'm here to see them and to be with them and to be there for them.

I can imagine not being there because I have imagined that and that's what the bridge collapse did.

It made me really appreciate what I have.