Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis

[vuphinder]

Holy Crap!!! Homeland security saying it is not terrorism related. Thanks for sounding off so soon guys!

[Gil]

My son crossed that bridge three times today. He called to say he is OK - thank goodness; we were unaware of the event until his call.

This is going to be a huge problem for Minnie for a long time... there is no other easy way to get from the north side to downtown at any reasonable speed.

As for Homeland Security - I have no problem with them giving the nation some assurance that it is not a security issue. There is nothing worse than rumors and panic when something like this happens.

[ISTHISTHINGON?]

Glad your boys alright Gil. And I agree....nothing wrong with immediately answering what was surely on everyone's mind....at least for a second. Sad but true...if something goes boom....my first thought is unfortunately "terrorism".

[thebrain]

Been on that bridge countless times. Probably last drove it a few weeks ago and it was under construction as it was today. Just unreal...

It is going to be a big problem, if you're coming from the north, going southbound on 35W, the exit after the collapse is the exit to Downtown Minneapolis, it's the exit to Metrodome, Target Center, and many other major businesses and corporations.

The Twins/Royals game for Thursday as well as the groundbreaking for the new Twins Stadium are canceled. This weekend's Twins game against the Indians may also be in question. The Timberwolves news conference with the K.G. trade was canceled. Wolves owner Glen Taylor's Grand-Daughter just made it over the bridge and he was very shaken.

ESPN didn't use the best wording in the Twins/Royals recap from tonight's game...

http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=270801109

Twins fall in 10th after bridge collapse in Minneapolis
Royals 5, Twins 3 (10 innings)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- After a moment of silence to honor victims of a bridge collapse near the Metrodome, the Kansas City Royals defeated the Minnesota Twins 5-3 in 10 innings Wednesday night.

Thursday's game between the teams was called off, but the Twins decided to go ahead with this one instead of sending about 25,000 fans back out onto the congested highways.

Alex Gordon hit a two-run homer in the 10th inning as the Royals won hours after manager Buddy Bell announced he would resign after the season.

The Twins had their four-game winning streak snapped.

Kansas City tied the game in the eighth inning when Matt Guerrier's wild pitch allowed Billy Butler to score.

Emil Brown singled up the middle with one out in the 10th off reliever Juan Rincon. Rincon (3-2) struck out Mark Teahen before Gordon homered off the second deck.

Zach Greinke (5-5) worked two scoreless innings of relief for the win.

Joakim Soria, taking over the closer's role after the departure of Octavio Dotel, worked the bottom of the 10th for his 11th save.

[McCovey Cove Returns]

That scares the **** out of me. I used to go over that bridge whenever I drove up to the Twin Cites. This is going to be a very high death toll. My condolences to all.

[thebrain]

Originally posted by McCovey Cove Returns:
That scares the **** out of me. I used to go over that bridge whenever I drove up to the Twin Cites. This is going to be a very high death toll. My condolences to all.So far seven dead, 60 injured.

This bridge is going to be out for some time. The federal government will pony up the money for most, if not all of this. Especially with the 2008 GOP Convention being held in nearby St. Paul.

[photog78]

The star-tribune is now saying that 9 are dead (as of 12:30am). What a sad and tragic event. My heart hurts for them early this morning. :(

[DW]

Originally posted by thebrain:
The federal government will pony up the money for most, if not all of this. Especially with the 2008 GOP Convention being held in nearby St. Paul.Ummm..why is politics being injected into this? :rolleyes:

[WeatherSlave]

Some don't realize how HUGE this is. This is a MAJOR artery,,, nay, AEORTA of traffic for the Twins. It could easily be 2-3 YEARS b4 we get a new bridge!

[thebrain]

Originally posted by DW:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by thebrain:
The federal government will pony up the money for most, if not all of this. Especially with the 2008 GOP Convention being held in nearby St. Paul.Ummm..why is politics being injected into this? :rolleyes: </font>[/QUOTE]Because it's a major Twin Cities event that's coming very soon and it's pretty much the main artery for the hundreds of thousands of people that live in the NE Metro into Downtown Minneapolis. Plus, it's a federal interstate. Did I say anything about democrats or republicans bickering it out? No. I just stated what people are thinking will happen and about a MAJOR event that will be taking place very near by very soon. Get off your high horse, do you have any idea what this is doing to the Twin Cities?

[Hank Scorpio]

All the national talking heads need to quit saying 35W goes between Mpls and St. Paul.

IT DOES NOT.

It goes from downtown Mpls to the U of MN and on to the north central suburbs. 35W is the main north/south thru Mpls, 35E is the main north/south through St. Paul. At no time does 35W enter St. Paul proper.

[DoneThatToo]

Aug 2, 8:34 AM EDT

Death Toll Dips to 4 in Bridge Collapse

By JON KRAWCZYNSKI
Associated Press Writers

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Authorities lowered the death toll from an interstate bridge collapse to four Thursday, but warned the final number could change as divers comb the twisted steel and chunks of concrete that crashed into the Mississippi River.


From WWLTV (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRIDGE_COLLAPSE?SITE=WWL&TEMPLATE=USHEADS.html&SECTION=HOME)

[Lazlo Toth]

Early death toll numbers and estimates are often way off. I remember when the Cypress Structure collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The Lt. Governor threw out a number early that was something like 250 dead. The final toll was in the forties. So the early numbers can be way off either way. It's an enormous amount of chaos when something such as this happens.

[cinehead]

I always think about the '89 San Francisco quake whenever I'm stuck underneath an overpass or bridge. I'm sure many of us will be having similar thoughts when we're on an overpass for years to come.

[Ping-Pong Ball]

This was a horrible tragedy. I don't live or work in the MSP DMA, but I was able to catch its coverage.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected.

Some of the coverage of this event last night has sickened me. For example, one channel having "experts" on to explain why the bridge collapsed. What is the point if you say in your question, "while I know you can't tell me exactly why the bridge collapsed, can you look at this picture and tell me what you think caused this bridge to collapse?"

Seems a lot of the coverage was spent on pure conjecture as to why this occurred with out solid fact. Seems breaking news is more about being the first on. Where getting it right plays second fiddle to the pictures & stories stations provided.

Also, I found it sickening stations were running crawls telling folks not to use cell phones so the lines would be clear for emergency use. Meanwhile these same stations were asking viewers on air to send them pictures they had taken with their cell phones, putting witnesses on air via cell phoners, one station even said, "we're going to let report X go, so he can gather some video with his cell phone & send it to us.

Next, seems like some of the footage was aired to be placed into promos. I sure hope stations don't use this tragedy to pimp their newsrooms. Lots of consultant speak during the coverage. Things I heard, "Our reporter xxxxx was first on the scene." "You'll only see these pictures from xxx's copter." "We were the first to report...."

While these stations did yeoman's work of being on for long hours under stressful conditions, much of the coverage was speculation & conjecture. Talking heads & reporters felt the needed to sensational pictures, raw video, images, & stories that were so graphically profound, they needed no additional sensationalizing.

All the fluff stations do 364 days a year has hurt more than just coverage on slow news days. It has turned a tragic situation of epic proportions into a media cirrus filled with conjecture which lacked a foundation of facts.

[ August 02, 2007, 11:02 AM: Message edited by: Ping-Pong Ball ]

[Brooklyn]

Well said, PPB. I very much agree.

[vuphinder]

I hate stories on how firefighters and police and fbi and health officials all had a hand in the recovery effort and how neighbor helped neighbor in their time of need. I heard one official say how proud she was to be from Minnesota where they all come together in tragedy.

[Ms. Corningstone]

Ditto. I watched national coverage of a presser this morning to see what the latest was on the recovery effort. But for 20 or so minutes the mic was tossed from Mayor to Governor to Senators to Representatives and they all took time to pat each other on the back -- BEFORE letting the incident commander give an update.

[Hank Scorpio]

Originally posted by Ping-Pong Ball:
This was a horrible tragedy. I don't live or work in the MSP DMA, but I was able to catch its coverage.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected.

Some of the coverage of this event last night has sickened me. For example, one channel having "experts" on to explain why the bridge collapsed. What is the point if you say in your question, "while I know you can't tell me exactly why the bridge collapsed, can you look at this picture and tell me what you think caused this bridge to collapse?"

Seems a lot of the coverage was spent on pure conjecture as to why this occurred with out solid fact. Seems breaking news is more about being the first on. Where getting it right plays second fiddle to the pictures & stories stations provided.

Also, I found it sickening stations were running crawls telling folks not to use cell phones so the lines would be clear for emergency use. Meanwhile these same stations were asking viewers on air to send them pictures they had taken with their cell phones, putting witnesses on air via cell phoners, one station even said, "we're going to let report X go, so he can gather some video with his cell phone & send it to us.

Next, seems like some of the footage was aired to be placed into promos. I sure hope stations don't use this tragedy to pimp their newsrooms. Lots of consultant speak during the coverage. Things I heard, "Our reporter xxxxx was first on the scene." "You'll only see these pictures from xxx's copter." "We were the first to report...."

While these stations did yeoman's work of being on for long hours under stressful conditions, much of the coverage was speculation & conjecture. Talking heads & reporters felt the needed to sensational pictures, raw video, images, & stories that were so graphically profound, they needed no additional sensationalizing.

All the fluff stations do 364 days a year has hurt more than just coverage on slow news days. It has turned a tragic situation of epic proportions into a media cirrus filled with conjecture which lacked a foundation of facts.You're offering up alot of criticism, what would you have done for ten strait hours with no breaks in programming? (I agree w/the cell phone thing)

Just curious

[Ping-Pong Ball]

Hank,

Excellent question.

1.) I would not have been wall to wall for 10 hours with no commercials. This was longer then the initial search & rescue effort.
2.) I would have stuck to only confirmed facts with no speculation from hastily called in experts who knew as little as the cause as the stations covering it.
3.) I would be careful with my use of the "break news" moniker. Stations were using the breaking news icon still this morning on their tickers with information that had not changed in almost 24 hours. Is it still breaking if the latest info has not changed in over 12 hours?
4.) If I had no new information (i.e.) after the first 60 minutes of Wall to Wall, I would have broken from the coverage. I would have gone to a split screen/ double box set-up with "live" video in one box & normal programming in the other. I would continue to run a crawl with information on the event, that was frequently updated with information that has been confirmed.
5.) Every commercial break, I would stop the double box, blow out the commercials, and do live reports. I would air clean edits of videos of the latest stories the news team collected. I would end each live break in with when the next live report would air. I would also include the time next live report will air in the ticker
6.) I'd have my weather team involved with the ad-libbing of the local breaking news. I witnessed one station who used their wx guy to report on what was going on for about 1 minute, his ad-libbing was the smoothest, he was informative & stuck to the facts of what was going on.
7.) I wouldn't air the press conference from the hospital live. I would have cleanly edited sound bits and had it on ASAP at the closest commercial break. It was pathetic to see reporters keep screaming questions about how many fatalities had occurred with the doctor responding with, I am not going to answer anymore questions on that subject. Sometimes, journalists are more like three year-olds with their behavior. So much emphsis was placed on the ever changing numbers of death. I would not have made this my main focus.

Outsuide the event:

8.) I would have team building exercises/day retreats quarterly where staff is mixed up into diverse small groups of personalities and mixed job titles where the teams would work on their interpersonal communication skills, problem solving skills, and working with others to accomplish tasks in a simulated environment that will involve stress, deadlines, & pressure.
9.) I would make sure my anchors spent at least 1 hour in training each month at the desk in front of the camera to work on doing the news without the prompter. Time would be spent on simulated breaking news, prompter outages, & script issues.
10.) Breaking news is not an excuse to throw common sense out the window. I would ingrain this in my entire staff.
11.) Being the market leader or authority to breaking news should not be measured by how many eye-balls tune into to view the sensationalistic eye candy, the slick promos put together by a department of spin doctors, or the cleaver alliteration filled clichés a station comes up with to title the tragedy. The bar for breaking news should be set on the substance, integrity, and professionalism of the team of delievers it.

Stations should never stay wall-to-wall because the station across the street is doing it too. Breaking news should never be monkey see, monkey do. If you have nothing new to report, back out, re-group and break back in when you do. If you have reporters stating the obvious or not adding to the story it's time to grow a pair, back out, re-group, and break back in when you or the reporter has actual news to report besides simply being on the scene.

My coverage would never be professional, high-tech multi-million dollar rubber-necking.

[Clever Login Name]

Every station should have its own disaster response plan ... a book that includes scenarios like this and how best to deploy station resources to it, along with names and numbers of people that could can provide valuable information ... so that when something like this happens, the EP or someone grabs the book, flips to the right page and starts directing staff properly.

I see your point about dumping out of coverage when you have nothing new to report, but I'm not sure you can justify that ... at least from a competitive angle. Yes, you may be repeating some information over and over again, but you have to figure not everyone has been watching the entire time ... some may be just tuning in to get some information and God forbid you've gone back to "Wheel of Fortune" while your competitors are all over the story. Breaking news like this is also a changing, developing story, so there should almost always be new things to report: the success of ongoing rescue efforts, the traffic situation getting better or worse, hospitals ramping up their e-rooms to handle the influx of victims. It's hard, but you sometimes need to stop immediately asking the "Why?" and just report what you're seeing on the ground. Again, better planning and foresight can help with situations like this.

[Clever Login Name]

Of course, you should also try to avoid disaster porn like this. (http://kstp.com/article/stories/S157974.shtml?cat=1)