Navy divers helping in Minneapolis bridge recovery

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A team of Navy divers and salvage experts is helping in the aftermath of the interstate bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the Defense Department announced Monday.

Eighteen divers and a five-person command-and-control team from Mobile Dive and Salvage Unit 2, based at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Va., are helping local salvage teams and other federal units with salvage and recovery efforts.



Article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/0...ivers_070806w/

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Navy divers continued probing the wreckage of a collapsed bridge for bodies Wednesday, and officials said they expected removal of heavy debris to begin later than expected to give the divers time to do their work.

At the dive site, two large cranes were ready to go. But they sat idle as divers returned to the water at about 7 a.m., doing “a very meticulous, hand-over-hand search of the scene,” said their spokesman, Senior Chief Mass Communications Specialist Dave Nagle.

Navy and FBI dive teams are trying to go deeper into the debris of the Interstate 35W bridge than the local dive teams that have worked since the Aug. 1 collapse, police Capt. Mike Martin said. He said he expects it to be at least a week before cranes start regularly hauling out large pieces of debris.

Meanwhile, the company that was working on the bridge rejected a report that one of its workers had noticed unusual swaying of the bridge in the days before the collapse. Progressive Contractors Inc. had said that it didn’t believe any of its work contributed to the bridge failure, but the company hadn’t responded directly to claims of wobbling.

“We have now met with every single worker who was on the bridge when it collapsed,” Tom Sloan, vice president of the company’s bridge division, said in a statement. “None of them observed or reported any unusual swaying.”

The National Transportation Safety Board has said reports of wobbling will be part of its investigation. The agency issued a brief update of its work Wednesday, saying helicopter observations had found several “tensile fractures” in the superstructure on the north side of the bridge, but nothing that appeared to show where the collapse began.

Investigators said they have also found design issues with gusset plates — steel plates that tie steel beams together — but gave no other details. The update said investigators were verifying loads and stresses on the beams, as well as materials in the plates.

Five people are confirmed dead in the collapse, with at least eight others missing and presumed dead. At least eight people were still hospitalized Wednesday, one in critical condition.



Full article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/0...lapse_070809w/

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Authorities said Thursday they had recovered the bodies of two victims from the site of the interstate bridge collapse and believed they had a third. If the third recovery is confirmed, it would bring the confirmed death toll to eight.

One of the bodies was identified as Peter Joseph Hausmann, 47, of suburban Rosemount. Soon after Hausmann was found, Navy divers recovered other remains that were first thought to be one body. At a news conference, Hennepin County medical examiner Andrew Baker said that was now believed to be two people.

“The additional remains appear to probably represent more than one individual,” Baker said.

Hausmann was on a list of eight people that had been known missing in the Aug. 1 collapse. Baker said authorities believe they know the identities of the other two, and they were also on that list. They were not immediately identified.

All of the bodies were recovered in the debris field by Navy divers, who joined a slow-moving search for victims after it was nearly a week old, and they were expected to be in the water late into the night.

Sheriff Rich Stanek said that by Thursday, the Navy dive teams were able to penetrate most of the debris field — the collapsed bridge decking. He said there were a few of those spots left to penetrate, after which “some debris may have to be removed significantly before we make additional recoveries,” Stanek said.

He said the Navy dive teams had split the work at the collapse site into 9-hour shifts, starting early in the morning and not wrapping up until late at night.

Baker said it may become more difficult to positively identify remains now that they’ve been in the water more than a week. He said his investigators have been working with families of the missing to get dental records and other medical information that could make identifications easier. He also said his office has access to DNA technology if that’s needed.

As searchers combed the river for victims, federal officials looking into the cause of the collapse issued an advisory for states to inspect the metal plates that hold girders together on bridges nationwide.

Investigators said the gussets on the failed Minneapolis bridge were originally attached with rivets, old technology that’s more likely to slip than the bolts used in bridges today.

Some of the plates, or gussets, also may have been weakened by welding work over the years and some of them may have been too thin, engineering experts said Thursday.

Investigators are also looking at whether extra weight from construction work could have affected the bridge. An 18-person crew had been working on the Interstate 35W span when it collapsed during the evening rush hour.

Bruce Magladry, director of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Office of Highway Safety, said the agency will use a computer to simulate how the bridge might have behaved with different loads, and with different parts of the bridge failing. He said there are infinite combinations to test, so the simulation may have to be run 50 times or 5,000 times.

“Then we compare what the [simulated] collapse looks like to what we actually see out there on the ground,” Magladry said, and repeat the simulation until it matches what happened.



Full article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/0...divers_070810/


Photo credit: Andrew McKaskle / Navy

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Video: http://www.militarytimes.com/multime...llapse_070810/

[CUSEFAN21]

Definitely was very good training and showed americans they didn't waste money training these fine servicemembers but was such a sad situation.