I got home earlier than usual today (Wednesday) from work.  I’ve been skipping 35W lately since the traffic has been slow with all the construction they’ve been doing so I’ve found a nice quick way across the 3rd avenue bridge that gets me to work in about 20 minutes opposed to a 10 minute run across the 35W bridge when there is no traffic.  So I got home around 5:45.  I usually don’t get home until later but I was going to go for a run or work out before I headed down to Chicago where I am right now.  That changed at a little after 6 though when Jim called and asked if I could see what was going on outside.  I had been hearing police cars none stop go by for the last few minutes but didn’t think anything of it as I was packing for vacation.  I went out to my balcony and all I could tell was that the 10th avenue bridge was on fire (the picture on this post shows the smoke from that).  Jim said the 35W bridge had fell down and it wasn’t until I got off the phone that I realized I couldn’t see the 35W bridge cause it was in the water.  The 10th avenue bridge is usually partially covered up by the 35W bridge so it didn’t dawn on me until I realized I could see the whole bridge behind where 35W had been.  This was about 10-15 minutes after it fell so I called Rex to let him know I was ok.  I couldn’t get a hold of my Mom or any other family so I’m glad I got through early on since after I talked to him my cell phone stopped working until I was on my way to the airport and outside of downtown.
At any rate, after I got off the phone with Jim and watched a few minutes of news I decided to grab my camera and run down to see if there was something I could do.  Being that close I thought I could at least go and see.  Most of the roads had  police with baracades up so couldn’t get really close but I was able to find my way down by the locks and get a pretty good look at the south side of the bridge before they sectioned that area off.  I couldn’t believe what I saw.  There were cars overturned in the water.  Pieces of concrete floating in the river with people and cars sitting on them – complete unharmed thankfully.  I’m not sure what the fire on the south side of the bridge was from but the flames were gone by the time I got close and they were putting water on a lot of smoke from what I could tell.  The south end of the bridge looked pretty flat and was just resting on the road below it but the north end had turned complete vertical.  The entire bridge from end to end was in the river though.  Everyone I knew from my building was outside along with people from all the other condos along the river.  The Twins game was also going on so there were a bunch of people coming out of the game to see what had happened.  I was only out for an hour or so before I had to go to the airport but I can’t believe that happened.  I just hope most of the people are ok who were on that bridge and thank God I didn’t take that way home tonight.