On way home, a nightly routine turns into horror

MINNEAPOLIS — Four minutes after the I-35W bridge collapsed, police Sgt. Ed Nelson and other first responders rushed into the dust-filled scene of twisted metal, crushed cars and chunks of concrete turned up like gravestones.

The 55-year-old jumped over debris and crawled across a foot-wide twisted beam to get to some dazed survivors on a piece of interstate dumped into the Mississippi River. He and two other officers helped them onto rescue boats.

"I just explained to them that they had fallen. They seemed somewhat amazed by that," Nelson said Thursday. "We made sure everybody was off that span, and we got on the last boat."

Nelson wouldn't speak of the dead. Police Chief Tim Dolan did.

First responders Wednesday had to do more than rescue the living and recover the dead, he said: At times the only thing they could do for people trapped under wreckage was to listen.

"There are some unbelievable testimonials and stories involving a number of those people. People who were pinned or partly crushed told emergency workers to say 'hello' or say 'goodbye' to their loved ones," Dolan said.

The scene Dr. John Hick found when he reached the south side of the bridge was hellish, but the emergency room physician didn't see the worst of it until he reached the north side 30 minutes later, after helping to set up a triage point.

The 64-foot-high span is not as high above the riverbank on the south side, so those injuries were less serious. On the other bank, there was little he could do.

"If you drop 60 feet, that's about the same thing as hitting a brick wall," said Hick, assistant medical director for emergency medical services at the Hennepin County Medical Center. "At the time that I got to the north side, the only people who were still in their vehicles were the people who had died."

There was a different feeling of helplessness at the site of the collapse Thursday, well after the emergency crews switched from a rescue operation to one of recovering the dead.

Submerged cars sat in the Mississippi, guaranteeing the death toll will rise above the official figure of four. The danger of unpredictable currents kept dive crews from reaching them.

But amid all the death were untold scores of people amazed to have survived the fall.