Bridge Collapses

Federal investigators announced Tuesday that a "serious design error" was a key factor behind last summer's deadly collapse of a Minnesota bridge, but also said that the mistake would not likely have been discovered during routine state inspections. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark V.

John McCain's obsession with banishing "wasteful government" spending in the form of "earmarked" projects has long annoyed his colleagues in Congress. But he may have gone a bit too far lately. In New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward last week, McCain startled reporters when he said Congress was partly to blame for the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, because it "funded pork-barrel projects" instead of "projects that were needed here."

A year after the collapse of Minneapolis' Interstate 35W bridge, which killed 13 people and injured more than 100, the drive to improve the safety of the nation's bridges has faded amid waning public interest to fund such projects in a souring economy. "The push to repair bridges and our country's infrastructure has become a victim of the bad economy," said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat who, along with California GOP Gov.

The morning rush-hour collapse Tuesday of a highway overpass under construction near Oroville injured three people, buried a delivery truck and shut down a key highway crossroads in Butte County. Authorities say construction worker Jeff Doll, 39, of Plumas Lake, Calif., "surfed" toppling steel girders to the ground, suffering broken bones that left him in serious condition at a hospital. Also injured was FedEx driver Robert Sylvester, 45, of Chico, Calif.

With a shudder and a thundering crack, an eight-lane bridge collapsed during Wednesday evening rush hour, plunging dozens of cars and people into the Mississippi River below. The steel-and-concrete Interstate 35W span buckled and swayed, creaked, and then, in a terrifying instant, crumbled. Green girders and huge chunks of concrete crashed more than 60 feet into the water. One portion of the interstate caved into a jagged V, trapping several cars and drivers.

The interstate highway bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River had been rated "structurally deficient" for 17 years and was regularly inspected by state engineers, who spotted corroded bearings and stress fractures but remained confident that the bridge was safe, authorities said Thursday. At least 20 vehicles remained submerged in the murky waters of the Mississippi, many of them pinned under large chunks of rubble.

A house of cards is how some engineers describe the steel truss system used on the Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River, saying that almost any piece of the complex design that failed would have brought down the entire span.

The river was slick with gasoline, dirty and dark. Raul Ramos dived in. There was a car underwater, a woman in the driver's seat. Ramos could see rough chunks of concrete and a tangle of metal rods jutting up at odd angles, treacherous in the murk. A slight current pushed at him. He swam. Above, the steamy summer night was full of noise and motion and acrid smells. Firefighters were wrenching open car doors with pry bars and attacking rubble with circular saws. Ramos reached the car.

One new widow spent Friday in the purple living room she painted with her husband, wondering how she could raise their two small children without him. Thirty miles away, another widow moved solemnly through her day, scheduling a memorial, deciding which suit to bury her husband in, and worrying how she would collect enough money to send his body home to Santa Lucia, Mexico.

Divers scoured treacherous waters searching for bodies on Saturday, stopping for a brief period when a rainstorm sent twisted metal, glass and debris whirling dangerously in the Mississippi River. Time ticked by too slowly for frustrated families waiting a fourth day for news about loved ones whom they had not heard from since Wednesday night, when the Interstate 35W bridge buckled, killing at least five people and injuring nearly 100 others.