Easygoing Mood Turns Bleak

ST. PAUL, Aug. 2-- The Twin Cities are not used to disaster.

Minneapolis and St. Paul -- with city limits that border each other and central downtowns separated by less than ten miles -- are for the most part calm, clean and cosmopolitan places, with relatively low crime and unemployment rates and a distinctly easy-going friendliness.

And so the initial mood in the first hours after the 35W bridge collapsed Wednesday night echoed the title of a novel by Sinclair Lewis, the only Minnesota native to win the Nobel Prize in literature: "It Can't Happen Here."

Hundreds of people wandered the blocks around University Avenue and 10th Street, just northwest of the bridge and near the University of Minnesota campus. Most stores stayed open late, so people could gather in groups reminiscent of a grim block party.

The weather had cooled somewhat from an unusual spate of 90-degree days, but those in the streets still gratefully accepted cups of water or juice proffered by volunteers.

Every radio seemed to be tuned to the local public station. Reports were calm and straightforward, including not only the possible number of dead, but also advice on how those who were attending the Minnesota Twins game near the collapse might be able to get home; and how the morning commute might be affected.

Police firmly refused to let anyone through the emergency barriers to see the edge of the bridge beyond the flashing police lights. But they were polite and considerate, and there was an eerie lack of any hysteria, despite the proximity to the scene.

It was only once you found your way into a bar and actually saw what had happened, from a television helicopter's eye-view, that the magnitude of the collapse hit home.

In front of the screen, the mood turned bleak, and it was impossible to keep oneself from doing some solemn math.

The collapse happened at the height of rush hour (the Twin Cities has an increasing traffic problem) on one of the major routes -- easily comparable to the 14th Street Bridge that connects downtown Washington to Northern Virginia.

Approximately 50 cars were on the bridge when it buckled and then sank (some suggested there might have been more).

The span of the bridge from one side of the Mississippi to the other was 458 feet, with no intermediary support at all (when the bridge was built in 1967, the pylons were placed on either side of the river in order not to block river traffic), with a maximum drop of 64 feet.

As official after somber official said Wednesday night and Thursday morning, it was clear that the final death toll had not been reached -- had not even begun to be tallied.

Tons of cable and concrete could be seen in the Mississippi. Some cars looked as though they had been caught in the modern equivalent of the ghastly lava that stopped Pompeii one horrible day in 79 A.D.

One man in Kelly's Bar in St. Paul spoke for all when a hapless newscaster speculated on the delays that would be caused on the bridge the next morning.

"There aren't just going to be delays," the patron said. "That bridge is gone!"

And so it was. It did happen here.