Talk:I-35W Mississippi River bridge/Archive 7

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Contents

Another victim found

[1] Nil Einne 09:04, 11 August 2007 (UTC) :I believe that report is in error. The local news agencies in Minneapolis are still saying 8-dead; 5-missing.--Appraiser 14:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Height

Not sure how to handle this one, and this deals more with the reference item than the actual article discussion, but the actual height of the bridge deck is a question that's been asked of me recently. Based on the original BR9340 design plans that are already referenced (ref #25), page 2 of the plans (also noted in the reference item) shows the "finished grade profile on the outside edge of the median gutter", which in other terms is the left edge of the inside lane in each direction, and is a pretty good indication of deck height. The bridge was on a slight downgrade (0.7%) heading northbound, but the elevations and station numbers are well noted on the bridge plans. Calculating for the middle of the main river span (Station 67+98...each "station" is 100ft in length), and double-checking my numbers from both reference points, I get a deck elevation of 841.1ft (rounded to the nearest 0.1ft...we can probably go with an even 841ft) in the middle of the span. Page 2 of the bridge plans then notes a "flat pool elevation" of 724.64ft, which is obviously what the Corps of Engineers used for their baseline since the "64ft vertical clearance" also is mentioned on the bridge plan. 841.1 - 724.64 = a deck height of 116.46ft in the middle of the main span. Again keep in mind that the overall bridge was on a slight downslope heading north, so "your mileage may vary".

And since the river was running low due to the drought, the river surface on 8/1 was probably even a little more than that...118-120ft perhaps...not sure how low the river was at the time.

Shall I go ahead and update the article mention and the reference item? Ajfroggie 02:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I had looked at the same material and at one time had a similar analysis in the footnote,[2] but then edited the footnote for length as I thought this much detail might not be needed in the article.[3] The archives also contain prior discussion of this issue at Talk:I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge/Archive_4#Height. The 1965 plans and the later inspection report are clear. And as you note, the grade does affect the height. The pool elevation is maintained for navigation by the Ford dam and may not necessarily have been lower. Kablammo 19:27, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Reverting the ill-conceived rolling death toll table

I've reverted this: [4] A table back-referencing to the creeping death toll of edits to this page was really creepy. Surely un-encyclopedic. -- KelleyCook 14:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree, at least not in THAT particular form. --Hourick 14:25, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, that's just saying "these people said this on this date", and that just shows bias towards specific media outlets. Using Wikipedia as a source is absolutely unacceptable, unless you're writing an essay on Wikipedia --Lucid 14:29, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
A creeping total of detected meteorite hits worldwide would be so cool. I could even handle such a thing for the War in Iraq (having a shufti, I see there is one), or drunk driving fatalities since 1980 in France or whatever (and that's a very big number, by the bye) but in the context of a single event which randomly caused such tragic and wholly unexpected deaths, yeah, I'd say it's insensitive at best, not helpful because the fatalities aren't hard to otherwise track and unencyclopedic because as such, it would be a distraction (WP:Life is not a video game). Gwen Gale 15:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
The difference is, meteorite hits are a cumulative event, and the number does change over time. The number of casualties from the bridge collapse is not cumulative. Barring anybody passing away in the hospital, the number of deaths was not increasing over time, just the number of known/confirmed deaths. I agree, that's something we don't need a table of in the article. —C.Fred (talk) 16:36, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
I was trying to illustrate the evolution of the casualty numbers, but as I built the table what I found was inconsistency in the data, which in the end was what I found most interesting. I do believe that this information has encyclopedic value...in particular the length of time it took to recover all the bodies (still a work in progress), and the "fog of war" related to this rapidly evolving event. I find the arguments against including this data to be odd in that these items were sourced in their individual revision and now we are saying they can't be sourced in a later revision? Many of those same sources are still being used in the current version of the article. I don't believe that the current process of simply stating the number of deaths, injuries, and missing as of today's date provides the reader an accurate picture of this aspect of the collapse. Are ya'll saying that including some form of this information in narrative form would make it more palatable? Theflyer 04:20, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
It's just not encyclopedic. Yes, it's WP:INTERESTING, feel free to make a userspace essay on stuff like this, but it's not encyclopedic content. It's not about the bridge collapse, it's about media sensationalism, really --Lucid 04:25, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Note to active participants of this article

It has come to my attention that many people making frivolous mentions of the I-35W bridge throughout all articles relating to Minnesota and our Twin Cities are also active participants of this article. It's great Wikipedia has such an attentive and active community free to all who can write, but seriously, please give some to *think* about whether a mention of this bridge or incident is necessary. It has come to a point where we are discovering irrelevant mentions in fairly unrelated articles (other bridges, public officials, environment stuff, etc). It has become very tiresome for to clean our articles up. Stick with sources for now until you think the most obscure topics deserves mention of the I-35W bridge. From a personal Wikipedia editor's pov, this bridge's effect is much smaller than the media has portrayed it. The bridge's absence on the area is basically a detour, in fact weeks before the collapse the entire highway was shut down for improvements over a weekend. Traffic detours don't belong in Wikipedia. Honestly, any trivial facts belong inside this article alone. I also recommend eliminating the stub links to this article. The incident is no longer current news. Davumaya 18:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Headings

Since the replacement bridge has its own article, why is the bulk of the article in a section heading for the old bridge? IMHO, the article is about the old bridge, so we should discuss the bridge in top-level sections and also have a top-level section with a brief summary of the replacement bridge. —C.Fred (talk) 01:49, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

A bridge in Connecticut

There's an AfD discussion about General Pierce Bridge. It's difficult to justify its notability, but this article was similar on July 31. On August 1, it immediately became a useful resource. I think having these articles with photos and navigation boxes is invaluable. Your mileage may vary.--Appraiser 15:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The result was keep. Singularity 18:08, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Copied from AfD discussion page by Conrad T. Pino 01:47, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

History of St. Anthony Falls

I think the article may be going overboard presently in detail about the history of Saint Anthony Falls. Perhaps some of this material should be moved there.--Appraiser 18:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC) OK now.--Appraiser 15:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Keep an eye on User:Afaprof01

With this edit User:Afaprof01 changed many hyphens in the article, especially in dates, to a special Unicode character: 0x2013, known as an "En Dash", thereby breaking the URL's s/he so touched. S/he sometimes uses the AWB editor. They are fixed now.--76.221.184.185 09:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

FEMA

Hello. Could anyone here confirm that individuals affected by the bridge collapse became eligible for the types of federal disaster aid that are being made available to individuals in the flooded Minnesota counties? I was sure no, until I read about the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program for the flooded counties, which is state administered? That FEMA page says "All counties in the State of Minnesota". Thanks for any corrections, especially in the lead and the section of this article presently titled "Disaster declarations". -Susanlesch 01:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)