Riverboat passengers give eyewitness accounts of bridge collapse
A view from the east bank, just upriver from the scene the disaster, in the first hours after collapse.
Jessica Wood was sipping wine on the deck of the Minneapolis Queen paddleboat when I-35W overpass collapsed, creating the biggest bridge disaster in U.S history.
“I saw a car plunge 60 feet into the water,” she said.
Wood and 50 other people were on a company-sponsored cruise that left Boom Island at 5:30 p.m. on the night of the collapse. The boat was within about 1,000 feet of the overpass when the bridge’s support structure began to crumble.
As the bridge buckled, it created a thunderous, rumbling sound that another riverboat passenger, 32-year-old Cory Swingen of Minneapolis, compared to a “semi-truck running into a concrete wall.”
After the steel snapped and twisted, huge chunks of concrete wedged into the water below. That sent enormous dust clouds into the air, witnesses said.
“The whole collapse took about 10 or 15 seconds,” Cory Swingen said.
Passengers on the boat gasped, “Oh my, God, the bridge just fell,” said Stephanie Swingen, who was with her husband Cory on the cruise.
Stephanie Swingen watched what appeared to be a blue minivan in the middle of the bridge sink into the river as the road gave away beneath it.
“It fell down with the bridge,” said Stephanie Swingen. “People were in tears when it sunk in what happened.”
Although Stephanie Swingen doesn’t know the fate of the minivan’s occupants, she did see other victims escape harm. A few drivers sat on the collapsed roadway, stunned. One person slowly crawled up an angled concrete slab in an effort to reach safety.
In the moments before rescue workers arrived, the scene of the accident took on a “surreal” quality, Stephanie Swingen said. “It didn’t seem chaotic. It was calm, almost eerie.”
Below deck, passengers said the Minneapolis Queen’s captain alerted authorities with a “Mayday” message. And Jessica Wood’s husband, who had been talking to the couple’s babysitter, cut his conversation short. He dialed 911.
“Send everything,” Erik Wood told the emergency operator. “Send everything you got. It’s horrible.”
Todd Melby is a former editor of The Seward Profile, a predecessor of The Bridge.
last revised: August 2, 2007