I have watched the video a number of times.
I observe that the end of the bridge which mates up to land (or a low-mounted support near land) is the first to fall.
That actual junction is not visible in the frame – it is off camera to the right.
But you can see from the displacement of the bridge that the breakage occurs first at or near the point of joining to the land. That to me seems ridiculous.
The main truss is unaffected throughout most of the span, but then shears at the point of main support, about half way across the river. This is due tothe fact that the span has, at that point, already dropped straight down due to loss of support on the land end. The subsequent breakages all make sense, but the first one doesn’t.
MnDOT says this thing was OK in 2006. Minnesota has a major culture of proper maintenance because of the winter snows and deicing.
The very fast, immediate failure of the bridge at the point mating to land is, to me suspicious. The loss of the support on the land mating side seems to beinstantaneous across the entire support. This didn’t lose 1 girder on one side or a domino effect of girders. They seemed to all go at once.
Also supporting that observation is a complete lack of torque. This bridge falls straight down. There is no twisting motion. Both sides of that bridge were released simultaneously. After the first breach, then sections
across the bridge go one after another, which follows rationally.
My read is a very fast and simultaneous breaking of the support at the land mating point.
I find it, then, insulting to the intelligence that we are instantly told by the police chief and Washinton “it wasn’t terrorism, it wasn’t terrorism, it wasn’t terrorism.”
A horrific event. I saw some of the released video, what is the length of the collapse time, curious if that is included.
A theory floated last night by a weather guy was that an dam 200 yards upstream may have over time created enough of a disturbance of and removal of sediment and bedrock.
btw, I have not seen or reviewed a detailed map of that area so I am not sure where and how many and even if there are supports that could have been undermined in any way.
It also sounds like they had some lanes closed and slow moving bumper to bumper traffic that may have caused more load to be present , a ‘perfect storm’ of things if you will.
Obviously, there have been other failures and investigators will now need to compare those and this event to better determine what caused what we witnessed happen.
For this to be terrorism, someone would have needed to have the material to blow the joints, as well as the knowledge of where to place them and a means to detonate them. They would have needed to place these charges on a well traveled bridge, while bridge work was going on. Then they would have needed to hope that the workers didn’t detect anything or accidently knock the charges loose. And even then, there would have been absolutely no way to be certain that the entire bridge would blow and cause widespread death.
For the same amount of effort, a terrorist with the ability to do this could have placed charges in an office building parking garage at night. Had a much lower chance of detection, been able to insure that the entire building collapsed and kill hundreds of people.
So, why would a terrorist go to so much effort to plan a very sophisticated attack which, while tragic for those who died, would be considered fairly minor?
Rewatch the video and tell me where the explosion was. Where was the smoke? Where were the reports of odor from the explosives? Why did everything go down and nothing blast out? The reality is, that a terrorist who was sophisticated enough to do this could have done more damage than any of us want to think about.
What I want to know if why the video didn’t include the beginning of the event. That camera would likely have been on the whole time. Why on earth wouldn’t we get to see it start earlier? Even if it doesn’t show the actual section where it started, it seems odd that the released video begins after the event does. What are not supposed to see?
Also, if you notice at the very end of the collapse, there is a section across the river that was still standing after the rest went down. Then it collapsed as well, beginning with the part closer to the other shore. I’m not an engineer, but that seemed odd to me as well. Then you have several different witnesses describing a large “boom” just before it went down. Lastly, this happened in Minneapolis, home of the flying imans.
I guess I should put on my tin foil hat because this all seems kind of suspicious to me.