Washington - An eight-lane highway bridge that collapsed
into the Mississippi during rush-hour traffic, killing at least four
people, had been rated structurally deficient by inspectors, the
state governor said Thursday.
Officials said dozens of cars were still submerged in the river
and the death toll was expected to rise after Wednesday's disaster on
the 40-year-old span linking the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul in
the northern state of Minnesota. About 60 people were injured.
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty acknowledged that a federal survey
in recent years found the bridge structurally troubled - one of about
80,000 bridges in the US that have the designation, he said.
But state engineers later determined that the ill-fated span, part
of the I-35W interstate highway, would need to be replaced only in
about 2020, he said.
'Structurally deficient does not mean immediately close the
bridge,' Pawlenty told Fox News television.
The disaster sparked debate about the decaying state of the US
interstate highway system, launched in the late 1950s by then
president Dwight D Eisenhower.
Eisenhower, a US general in Europe during World War II, was
inspired by the autobahns begun in Germany by Nazi leader Adolf
Hitler.
The Minnesota bridge, built in 1967 and including a 140-metre
section across the river, was undergoing surface repairs when it
crashed.
Initially, Pawlenty said the bridge passed state inspections in
2005 and 2006 with superficial problems but no structural
deficiencies.
Officials first put the confirmed death toll at up to nine, but
revised it to four early Thursday. By dawn Thursday, rescuers said
they had little hope of finding more survivors in the crumpled
wreckage of the steel-truss bridge.
Kristi Rollwagen, an emergency preparedness official with the city
of Minneapolis, said that an estimated 50 vehicles were still
submerged in the Mississippi river.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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