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The worst case scenario did not materialize in Minneapolis. Many of the missing motorists who were feared dead in Wednesday's interstate highway bridge collapse were found alive. And several of the crashed cars under the debris on the Mississippi River bed turned out to be empty. Since the death toll from the disaster may now prove to be smaller than a dozen the story turned from a human tragedy to an infrastructure investigation. All three networks led once again with the bridge--but the Story of the Day accounted for less than half of yesterday's newshole (20 min v 45) as the anchors returned to their New York City studios after a single day on the scene.

On the human side, ABC's Dan Harris offered thumbnail portraits--a former college baseball star, a vegetable salesman father of a newborn, a financial services worker, a cosmetology student--of the motorists who are known to have died. Lee Cowan showed us NBC News Animation computer graphics to illustrate how searchers are mapping the river bottom with side-scan sonar. "The bridge is still moving, unstable at best," he reported, explaining the slow progress. In all some 60 cars may be under water.

CBS' Byron Pitts found Fatigue Evaluation and Redundancy Analysis, a 2006 engineering report that isolated 52 potential weak spots in the I-35 bridge: it recommended reinforcement with steel plates and the removal of suspect welds. "State officials wanted other options," said ABC's Lisa Stark (subscription required), "and decided to go with closer inspection of the areas instead." Back in New York, NBC's retired transportation correspondent Robert Hager returned to the studio for a show-and-tell, contrasting the civil engineering of the failed bridge's truss design with a suspension system. Truss steel beams support the roadway from below; suspension has the deck hang from towers--so a truss failure can be more catastrophic since the entire bridge collapses rather than a portion. At the same time, ABC's Harris noted, the truss design does without overhead support beams that can fall on cars and crush them.

Andrew Tyndall 8/4/07 6:57:54 pm

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