Quote:
Originally Posted by Fazor
I originally heard there were six fatalities, and later heard that there were est. 50 cars on the bridge at the time. My heart goes out the the six +/- people who died, but was astounded at how many survived. Horrible tragedy, but it could have been much much worse.
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The relatively small number of fatalities appears to be because:
1 - The bridge collapsed like a pancake (a flat-falling one, not a flipping one). An amazing number of vehicles stayed on the bridge for the ride down to terra firma, many remaining upright. A couple people were interviewed within minutes and they said the impact of landing was significant, but sore backs and bruises were the only injuries many had. A few guys got out of their cars immediately and went to work pulling kids off that bus and whatnot; rescuing as many of the people who could not get out themselves as fast as they could.
2 - The place was crawling with civilians immediately after the collapse. It is in an urban area of course; and loads of residents (including students from the immediately adjacent U of M) immediately went to work getting people off the bridge and pulling people out of the water. There was footage within minutes of people in the water checking cars for survivors, and a small army of civilians crawling all over the embankments and collapsed portions.
So the fatality count as of last night was 7; this morning one station was reporting 9. They're strictly guessing still at how many cars are in the water; they are saying about 50. It shouldn't take long to get a good count as the water is only about 10' deep. The assumption (may be a lot of hope - but the video confirms a lot of rescues) is that most of those cars are empty.