The emergency response to the Interstate 35W collapse in Minneapolis: medical students in action
Human behaviour is difficult to predict. A public infrastructure disaster puts stress on the health care and emergency response systems, and individuals are forced to react. The collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi in Minnesota during evening rush hour traffic on Aug 1, 2007, showed one community’s emergency preparedness. Catherine Pastorius interviews some first responders to the scene
Following the collapse, amidst a cloud of dust and debris, bystanders rushed to the shores to help rescue victims whose cars had been dumped into its murky waters. Room mates and fourth year medical students at the University of Minnesota, Nicole Kopari and Missie Wayne, were integrally involved in the emergency response, aiding victims, families, and health professionals. They were home eating dinner when Missie’s worried mother called to ask, “Are you safe?”
It was a balmy 95ºF and humid when Nicole and Missie ran to the scene to help. As they arrived, Nicole remembers thinking, “Holy cow! Now that we made it to the front line, what do we do?” Their assistance was requested on the other bank and, rather than crossing at the next bridge, they were escorted by a firefighter in an inflatable dingy. As they zoomed through the muddy waters, Nicole thought, “What do we need to do to help these people?” She was scared about what she was going to see. “You go into this mode of helping people. I didn’t even look at the bridge. I hate using the word ‘surreal’ but you don’t even realise the magnitude of what happened.”
Firefighters on the bridge handed injured people to the girls. They comforted them, checked their pulse and breathing, and arranged for bystanders with trucks to come down to the river, since there was no route for ambulances to get there. Nicole recalls, “You are in the moment doing what you thought you had to do.”
Prof. Ross Macmillan (University of Minnesota), who had driven underneath the bridge on the north side of the river less than a minute before it collapsed, said he heard an explosion and saw the concrete dust cloud. “There was really like 5 seconds from when I realised something happened to when I started running [to the bridge],” he recalls.
Macmillan described the chaos: some cars were on the bridge that was hanging from the cliff, some had fallen with the bridge, and some were barely visible in the water. He remembers thinking that there were a lot of people who needed medical help, and saw people who had just escaped from their own cars then go to assist others. One man, whose van had fallen into the rushing water, made an altruistic sacrifice when he drowned trying to save someone in another vehicle.
“The emergency response was actually very quick,” said Professor Macmillan. Firefighters, police, and emergency medical technicians responded within minutes and, by the end of the first hour, there were hundreds of people available to help. Professor Macmillan said, “For the first 30 minutes there were more victims than [first responders] there to help.” But after first responders arrived, “The people that had some training or experience … were more useful than the average person.” In total, less than 100 people were treated for injuries and a dozen were confirmed dead. “I’m surprised at the outcome. I would have thought there were many more people who were seriously injured or had died,” Macmillan said.
The bridge had been undergoing routine surface work for months, and four of the eight lanes were shut down at the time. Greg Hestness, assistant vice president for public safety and police chief at the University of Minnesota, was on scene an hour after the event. He said, “Like many events, [al]though this was of unparalleled scale, [this disaster] proved [that] we were well prepared to respond. Not perfectly, but it will never be perfect. I am a little more confident of our region’s ability to pull together in an effective way very rapidly.”
Nicole and Missie agree that their training prepared them and gave them a sense of calm. Nicole argues, “It is who we are as people that made us want to go to the front of the scene and help out. What we need are more people like that in medicine.” After the event, she said, “I feel a little silly. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be involved, but silly in the sense that we didn’t do anything.” She hopes that many people would have done the same thing, if in her situation. “The real heroes were the firefighters crawling through rubble pulling people out of cars.”
Greg Hestness recommends that the emergency response team, from police officers to first responders, keep training, even during protracted periods free from emergencies. He is committed to continuous improvement of our emergency response capabilities, helping develop leadership, and said he wants to “always be mindful of the personal toll that such an incident can have on the first responders who answer the call.”
Often, knowing what is needed and how to get needed resources to those that need most it is difficult. A disaster fund was established immediately (http://www.minnesotahelps.com/) to facilitate local contributions to disaster relief efforts and to distribute them effectively to help the victims, rescuers, and families affected by the bridge collapse. The community response has been overwhelming. The governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, hurried legislation in Washington, DC, for US$250 million in emergency reconstruction aid, as well as plans for reconstruction of a new 10-lane bridge by the end of 2008.
Catherine Pastorius
Third year medical student
University of Minnesota Medical School
USA
cpastorius@gmail.com