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MIAMI (CBSMiami) — Florida International University’s massive new pedestrian bridge collapsed Thursday afternoon in West Miami-Dade. The bridge, located at 109th Ave and 8th Street, collapsed on a number of cars. There are reports of numerous people injured in the collapse. At least one person was taken as a trauma alert to the hospital, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. The 950-ton bridge went up on Saturday. It was then lowered into its final position, just west of 109th Avenue that day. The main span was built next to Southwest 8th Street.

Moments after the Interstate 35W bridge fell into the Mississippi River, 10-year-old Kaleigh Swift called her mom. Stuck on the school bus and unable to reach her, she left a voicemail. "The bridge broke as we were crossing it," Swift screamed into the phone. The mother and daughter shared the message with 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reporter Jessica Miles 10 years ago. "Are you there momma? Momma, are you there?" Swift cried out in fear. Many parents of children on the bus were at the Waite House in south Minneapolis, waiting to pick them up from a field trip. "I remember...

Incredible images emerged of a hulking freighter wearing mangled pieces of a steel bridge on its bow after a collision in southwestern Kentucky Thursday night. In the pictures, the 312-foot Delta Mariner idles, still partially in the bridge's path, and clearly looks much too large to fit beneath the aging Eggner Ferry Bridge, which crosses the Kentucky Lake Reservoir. The cargo vessel was carrying space rocket parts for the United Launch Alliance, intended for a vehicle that was scheduled to be shot into orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092796/Bridge-collapses-Kentucky-rammed-hulking-freighter-carrying-space-launch-equipment.html#ixzz1kgpuK4pc

An engineering firm that consulted on the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed three years ago has agreed to pay $52.4 million to victims. San Francisco-based URS Corp. had been sued by more than 100 people. They accused the company of missing warning signs on the bridge before its rush-hour collapse into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, 2007. Thirteen people died and 145 were injured. URS had argued that its engineers didn't know about a design flaw in the bridge that made it vulnerable when it collapsed. "Aug. 1, 2007, marked the greatest manmade catastrophe our state has...

MINNEAPOLIS -- Explosive documents about the Interstate 35W bridge suggest the engineering company the state hired to make sure the bridge was safe actually predicted it would collapse months before it fell apart. The documents are part of a lawsuit victims are bringing against California based URS Corporation. They accuse the firm of predicting a catastrophic event, but allegedly not telling anyone about it. The thought has been tough to swallow for the victims of that day in August 2007, when 13 people lost their lives and well over 100 were injured. "I remember until probably about 5:15 that day,"...

Citizens of Shanghai are aghast at the collapse of a major new bridge, pictured, which was revealed to be constructed partially out of rubbish instead of concrete. The bridge, spanning the Wusong River in central Shanghai, was completed in 2009 and replaced a century old bridge with a more modern design. However, after only a short period in operation the bridge began to collapse, with investigators finding such sturdy construction materials as bags of rubbish, Styrofoam, scrap wood and waste plastic used in the structure in place of reinforced concrete.

New Delhi, India (CNN) -- Forty-five people are believed dead after a bridge collapsed in the north Indian industrial hub of Kota, officials said Saturday. Rescuers were struggling to retrieve all the bodies of victims who fell into the Chambal River on Thursday after the bridge collapsed, according to K. Ravikanth, the top administrative official of Kota district. So far, rescuers have pulled out 11 bodies, he said. The bridge, under construction since 2007, is a joint venture among Gammon India, South Korea's Hyundai Engineering and India's national highway authority, said Rajeev Dasot, Kota's inspector of police. Kota, about 250...

A bridge over the I-75 in Hazel Park, Michigan has collapsed following a massive explosion after a gas tanker overturned.

< snip > Two steel plates along the bottom of a truss arch on the Main Avenue Bridge had rusted so thin in September 2007 that one had a four-inch hole -- leading transportation officials to worry privately that the span was in danger of collapsing. But no one warned the public about those fears. Although the outer lanes of the six-lane span were immediately closed, Ohio Department of Transportation officials said in news releases at the time only that they were repairing the bridge's structural steel. No specifics about the extent of the problem were revealed because the media...

It's official. The Interstate 35W bridge fell -- not because of what Tim Pawlenty or Carol Molnau did or didn't do -- but because engineers failed to calculate correctly the thickness of gusset plates more than 40 years ago. The National Transportation Safety Board's findings, released on Nov. 14, must feel like some vindication to Pawlenty, Molnau and MnDOT's bridge inspection and maintenance team. After the collapse, Pawlenty counseled patience. He urged Minnesotans to wait for a thorough investigation before leaping to conclusions about why the bridge fell. Instead, critics launched a relentless -- if often subtly expressed -- search...

WASHINGTON — The Interstate 35W bridge collapsed because of forces so great a massive piece of steel was stretched as if it were latex, eventually ripping apart and causing one of the biggest transportation disasters in U.S. history. Holding the first of a two-day hearing before it releases final findings and recommendations, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday the collapse in Minneapolis was caused by a fatal design error. The error allowed an accumulation of weight added to the bridge over its 40-year lifespan — plus the weight associated with a new construction project — to finally topple it,...

Honking their horns and stirring up faint clouds of post-construction dust, hundreds of drivers helped open the new Interstate 35W bridge this morning just a few minutes after 5 a.m. The two processions -- one from the south end of the bridge, one from the north -- were led by representatives of agencies that were the first responders when the old bridge collapsed last year. They were followed by Minnesota Department of Transportation maintenance trucks with sturdy, wide bumpers that kept drivers in line. Vehicles coming from the south were the first to make it across the 10-lane bridge, which...

Governor Pawlenty and other officials announced Monday when the new Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis will open. The bridge will open to traffic on Thursday at 5 a.m., just over a year after the old one tragically collapsed into the Mississippi River and cut off a key Minneapolis artery. Pawlenty was joined on Monday at a news conference on the new bridge by Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and members of Minnesota's congressional delegation. Officials also announced plans for a memorial to honor the victims of the August 1st, 2007, collapse of the old I-35W bridge that killed 13 people and...

One year ago today, when the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed during the evening rush-hour commute and killed 13 people, the disaster sparked a furious national debate about the crumbling state of our infrastructure. So quickly are such catastrophes forgotten that a major-party presidential candidate can now propose eliminating the tax that pays for bridge repair, and few bat an eyelash. About a quarter of the public road bridges in the United States are considered functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, according to the American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Fixing them would cost roughly $140 billion, but...

Study Finds Promises To Repair U.S. Infrastructure Have Gone Largely Unfulfilled By Alexis Christoforous, CBS 2 News NEW YORK (CBS) ― The one-year anniversary of the Minnesota bridge collapse is putting renewed focus on the safety of our nation's infrastructure. A new study finds many of the promises made then still have not been fulfilled, and lack of money is a big factor. It's been a year since the massive bridge collapse in Minnesota sent 13 drivers plunging to their deaths. The tragedy triggered nationwide bridge inspections, and promises to fix serious problems. But a review by the Associated Press...

Rotting holes in steel support beams, enormous rust patches, small splits in steel girders and broken bracing are evident all along the underside of the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge, the heavily traveled Interstate 95 span that crosses the Merrimack River between Amesbury and Newburyport. A just-released state safety report filed in the wake of last year's disastrous collapse of the similarly designed Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis gave the 57-year-old Whittier Bridge "poor" ratings due to deterioration. On a 10-step ranking system, the rating is just two steps above the point where engineers consider closing a bridge due to safety...

During MSNBC's live coverage of Tuesday's Democratic primaries, co-anchor Chris Matthews poked fun at Larry Craig's bathroom arrest during an interview with Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar as he referred to Republican plans to hold their presidential convention in St. Paul, and joked that Craig would be starting his book tour at the airport. Moments later during an interview with Clinton campaign advisor Lisa Caputo, he joked about the Minnesota bridge collapse as an embarrassment Republicans would have to face when they come to the state: "We're having a little bit of fun here tonight with the opportunity of Republican...

CLEVELAND (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Thursday backed off his assertion that pork-barrel spending led to last year's deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis. With Democrats criticizing him for citing wasteful spending as the cause of the disaster, McCain told reporters in Cleveland, "No, I said it would have received a higher priority, which it deserved." That statement was in contrast to McCain's remarks to reporters aboard his campaign bus as it rolled through Pennsylvania on Wednesday: "The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money. The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was...

Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending. Federal investigators cite undersize steel plates as the "critical factor" in the collapse of the bridge. Heavy loads of construction materials on the bridge also contributed to the disaster that injured 145 people on Aug. 1, according to preliminary findings by the National Transportation Safety Board. "The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money," McCain told reporters while campaigning in Pennsylvania. "The bridge in Minneapolis...

Old photos of the Interstate 35W bridge show two steel connecting plates were visibly bent as early as 2003 — four years before the span collapsed into the Mississippi River, killing 13 people. Minnesota Department of Transportation officials declined to say when the state first knew about the bending in the pieces of steel, called gusset plates. Two photos, part of a report issued earlier this month by the National Transportation Safety Board, reveal slight bends in gusset plates that hold beams together at two separate connecting points. The plates are in areas believed to be among the first points...