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Navy divers pore over Minn. bridge wreckage

MINNEAPOLIS — Navy divers continued probing the wreckage of a collapsed bridge for bodies Wednesday, and officials said they expected removal of heavy debris to begin later than expected to give the divers time to do their work.

At the dive site, two large cranes were ready to go. But they sat idle as divers returned to the water at about 7 a.m., doing “a very meticulous, hand-over-hand search of the scene,” said their spokesman, Senior Chief Mass Communications Specialist Dave Nagle.

Navy and FBI dive teams are trying to go deeper into the debris of the Interstate 35W bridge than the local dive teams that have worked since the Aug. 1 collapse, police Capt. Mike Martin said. He said he expects it to be at least a week before cranes start regularly hauling out large pieces of debris.

The FBI team had to abandon the use of the larger of its two unmanned submarines, agent Paul McCabe said Wednesday. The remote-controlled vehicle — equipped with a camera, sonar, lights and a grabbing arm — was too big to maneuver amid the unstable, twisted bridge wreckage and vehicles in the cloudy water, he said.

Instead, FBI divers will try their smaller sub, a shoe-box-size vehicle equipped only with lights and a camera. Its smaller thrusters make it more difficult to navigate the Mississippi River’s stiff river currents. The water where the divers are working ranges from 2 to 14 feet deep.

Debris removal had been expected to begin this week. The State Patrol said 88 vehicles have been located at the collapse site, including those in the Mississippi River.

Meanwhile, the company that was working on the bridge rejected a report that one of its workers had noticed unusual swaying of the bridge in the days before the collapse. Progressive Contractors Inc. had said that it didn’t believe any of its work contributed to the bridge failure, but the company hadn’t responded directly to claims of wobbling.

“We have now met with every single worker who was on the bridge when it collapsed,” Tom Sloan, vice president of the company’s bridge division, said in a statement. “None of them observed or reported any unusual swaying.”

The National Transportation Safety Board has said reports of wobbling will be part of its investigation. The agency issued a brief update of its work Wednesday, saying helicopter observations had found several “tensile fractures” in the superstructure on the north side of the bridge, but nothing that appeared to show where the collapse began.

Investigators said they have also found design issues with gusset plates — steel plates that tie steel beams together — but gave no other details. The update said investigators were verifying loads and stresses on the beams, as well as materials in the plates.

Five people are confirmed dead in the collapse, with at least eight others missing and presumed dead. At least eight people were still hospitalized Wednesday, one in critical condition.

DISCUSS: Recovery efforts