Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Death Toll Rises to 5 in Minnesota Bridge Collapse; Report: 25 Percent of Nation's Nearly 600,000 Bridges in Need of Repair; Toy Recall: China Concerns

Aired August 03, 2007 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, everyone. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM.
I'm Tony Harris.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins.

Watch events come into the NEWSROOM live this Friday morning. It's August 3rd.

Here's what's on the rundown.

The Minnesota bridge collapse. A new death toll. Divers take to the water in search of victims.

HARRIS: New questions about the safety of bridges. Just how bad are they, and is there money to fix them?

COLLINS: And health concerns over more products from China. A major recall involving almost a million popular toys.

In the NEWSROOM.

HARRIS: The death toll climbs, the grim search for victims resuming today. Here is the latest on the bridge collapse in Minnesota.

The medical examiner's office confirmed a short time ago that another body has been recovered from the wreckage. That brings the confirmed death toll to five.

Divers going back in the water this morning to search for more victims. The sheriff's office says eight people are still unaccounted for, and that is down from an earlier estimate that as many as 30 people were missing. And safety investigators say surveillance video of the collapse could provide valuable clues of what caused the bridge to fail.

COLLINS: Tons of twisted debris, strong river currents, just some of the hazards this morning that are facing divers as they search for more victims of the bridge collapse.

We want go live to Minneapolis now and CNN's John Roberts, who is standing by to give us the very latest. Boy, I can only imagine what some of those divers are coming across, John.

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: You know, we heard earlier from Sheriff Rich Stanek, who's the sheriff of Hennepin County. And he said it is very dangerous in the waters right now.

Yesterday, they asked the Army Corps of Engineers to lower the level of the river. That allowed more of the debris to be exposed so that the workers could get in there and try to identify remains of people who are still missing. And even though the death toll has gone up, Heidi, the small little bit of good news, Sheriff Stanek said that there are only eight people who remain missing.

But in lowering the level of that river, they increased the flow, which has created a lot more current in the area, a lot more unpredictable eddies. So it's very difficult for those recovery workers to go in there and go about their work. So, Sheriff Stanek said this morning this is going to be a very, very slow process.

Also, the big news here in Minneapolis this morning is a report in the "Star Tribune," a fine local newspaper, that says that the Minnesota Department of Transportation knew about some structural problems with this bridge a couple of years ago. Knew about potential stress cracks in the metal and had actually considered a retrofit by bolting steel plates on to those areas that looked like they may be weakening.

However, they opted for instead a program of inspections, because it was found, it was discussed and found that perhaps drilling thousands of holes in the super structure of the bridge to bolt those plates on may actually weaken the bridge even further. So they opted to have it inspected, talked about perhaps doing some retrofit work in a year or two.

But I talked with Governor Tim Pawlenty just a short time ago. He is looking for answers from his Department of Transportation. He knows about these concerns, he wants to make sure that the right decision was made here. Obviously, in hindsight, and it's very obvious, the problems were a lot greater than what the Department of Transportation had anticipated.

I also spoke with Mark Rosenker earlier this morning, who is the chief of the National Transportation Safety Board, talking about their investigation. There is some word that perhaps it was the center section of the span, that part over the Mississippi River that was the very first to let go. He would not confirm that, but he did say that they have good photographic and video evidence of the bridge collapse which will help them in their investigation.

I also asked him about the TWA 800 crash, where they literally picked up that entire aircraft off of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and reconstructed it in a hangar. I asked him if they would do something similar and try to trace back the origin of the bridge collapse. He said that they would indeed move parts of the bridge further downstream. Not actually reconstruct the bridge itself across the Mississippi, but lay it out on the ground to try to figure out exactly what the very first point of this catastrophic failure was so that they can try to determine exactly what it was that went wrong and whether or not any more bridges that were from a similar area -- similar era, rather -- may be suffering, or at least ticking time bombs that could suffer the same sort of catastrophic collapse.

As well, the governor has ordered all bridges in Minnesota be inspected. They have eight percent of their bridges identified as having some sort of structural deficiency. That's lower than the national average of 13 percent, but you can imagine, Heidi, after what happened here on Wednesday, officials here in the state of Minnesota and, in fact, the people of Minnesota, want to be absolutely sure, or as best as they can be, that when they travel over a bridge it's not going to disappear from underneath them.

COLLINS: Oh, sure. And I believe that that sentiment is resonating all across the country, in fact, after seeing what happened there on the 35W bridge.

I do wonder -- we have been talking about this now as far as Governor Pawlenty ordering those inspections of other bridges that are metal trusses just like this one. If they do find something wrong with the other bridges -- as you said, eight percent in Minnesota are of the same design -- is there a plan? Has he mentioned a plan of what would take place then? Would they just shut them down?

ROBERTS: You know, he didn't talk about any particular plan. I think what they're looking for is a survey of these bridges to find out how bad or how advanced some of these structural deficiencies might be.

You know, there's an editorial in the "Minneapolis Star Tribune" today as this growing sense of outrage permeates the city that, you know, perhaps they should have put a warning sign on this bridge that said, hey, this only 50 out of 100 on a recent government survey, sort of cross it at your own risk. Do you want to do that?

I'm sure that if they find some structural deficiencies that are fairly advanced in some of these bridges, Heidi, that is a step that they might take, would be to either limit traffic on the bridge, and that would keep heavy trucks off of it, because it's been found in certain studies that just reducing the weight on the bridge can, in fact, greatly increase its life span. Or, they could close it altogether, depending on how advanced those structural deficiencies were. But I would think after what happened here on Wednesday, they're not going to be taking any chances.

COLLINS: Absolutely not.

And quickly, I'm not sure what you can see from directly where you are. Just an update on the recovery effort.

Now, I know that yesterday they were talking to us about 100 divers or so that were in the water. I know they had to come out several different times yesterday, John, because of that fierce current. And you mentioned the unpredictable eddies that are flowing there.

What is the latest this morning now that the sun's up?

ROBERTS: They're going to go at it very slowly. That's what Sheriff Stanek told us this morning.

They believe that they have pretty much cleared everything downstream of the bridge collapse. They've been using the side-scan sonar to identify targets.

Yesterday, they found a car that did not have an occupant inside it. They found an old pickup truck they said that had been there for years, some scaffolding from the bridge resurfacing. And as well, just a debris field of some reinforcing rod and some pieces of concrete.

But they said the real problem is on the upstream side of that bridge, because of the fact that there's so much twisted metal there. The remains of the bridge are still very unstable. The water there is about 13 feet deep.

It's just really a tangled mess in there. And now with the river running faster, there's unpredictable currents. They're only putting teams in the water for a short time, and they're putting very few teams in the water.

He said that it's going to take some time. As to exactly how long it will take it's difficult to gauge, but certainly it could be the rest of this weekend before they have cleared the rest of those vehicles to make sure they have gotten all of the people that are missing.

And again, to reiterate, Heidi, the little piece of good news here this morning is the death toll increases by one now to five, the number of people missing has been reduced from between 20 and 30 down to eight now.

COLLINS: Wow. That is some good news, certainly.

All right. CNN's John Roberts coming to us live from Minneapolis this morning.

John, thank you.

HARRIS: Old bridges, new worries. A couple of structures closed just in case.

In Washington State, a 94-year-old bridge over the Elva (ph) River. It was going to be demolished anyway to make way for a new span. The Minnesota bridge collapse prompted officials to shut it down a month early.

And in St. Louis, a closure moved up by a year. A bridge carrying about 10,000 vehicles a day, county officials say it was too risky to keep the 82-year-old bridge open any longer.

COLLINS: The safety of America's bridges -- are other bridges at risk?

CNN's Dan Simon reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Some of them, like San Francisco's Golden Gate, are national symbols, but a startling number of America's bridges have become a symbol for something else, neglect and now danger. Bridges are essential to our daily lives, but more than 160,000 of them, more than a quarter of all the bridges in this country, have been rated as "structurally deficient" or "functionally obsolete".

In plain English, they're getting old.

PROF. MO EHSANI, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA: Like anything else, there is a useful life for all structures. And ultimately, they need to be replaced or strengthened.

SIMON: Engineering professor Mo Ehsani has designed nearly a dozen bridges in Arizona.

EHSANI: For most people not in this field, you know, they assume that any bridge that they drive on on a daily basis is a safe structure, but, you know, in certain cases, that may not be the case.

SIMON: Experts say some of the most traveled bridges in the nation have problems. They're structurally deficient. Bridges like the 51-year-old Tappan Zee Bridge in New York. More than 135,000 cross daily. And the Quinnipiac Bridge in Connecticut, 50 years old. It was designed to handle over 80,000 cars and trucks daily, but it's actually carrying more than 140,000 a day.

STEPHEN FLYNN, AUTHOR, "THE EDGE OF DISASTER": We're absolutely not doing what needs to be done to make sure our bridges are adequately maintained, are safe.

SIMON: Stephen Flynn wrote "The Edge of Disaster," examining our nation's aging infrastructure, including bridges..

FLYNN: It's very clear that we have to fix the bridges and keep them adequately maintained because they really are marvels of engineering in many cases. But when they fail, they really fail. And so, we can -- it's not just loss of life risk, which is, of course, a real tragedy. It is that these are the true lifelines in many cases of our cities.

SIMON: Some states are worse off than others. Federal data shows more than a third of bridges in New York, West Virginia and Vermont are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. The same goes for Connecticut, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Hawaii.

Pennsylvania is even worse, at nearly 40 percent. That state has 30 of the same design as the collapsed Minneapolis bridge. And in Rhode Island, 53 percent, more than half the bridges there.

(on camera): Bridges in western states tend to do better than other parts of the country. One reason, the bridges are newer. But climate also plays a major factor.

(voice over): Professor Ehsani says bridges in colder climates corrode more quickly.

EHSANI: The reason primarily is because of the de-icing chemicals that we use every winter to keep those roadways clean.

SIMON: Federal officials say it would cost $461 billion to fix America's bridges and roadways. The tragedy in Minneapolis may have provided the political and emotional will finally to take action.

Dan Simon, CNN, Tucson, Arizona.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: Doing their duty and feeling the pain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I'm very sorry for their loss, and that -- I don't think I can -- to maintain professionalism, I'm just going to stop with that line of questioning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Heroes at the bridge.

COLLINS: Cute, cuddly and potentially dangerous. More than a million toys recalled.

HARRIS: And the search for answers amid a tangled web of steel and concrete. The latest on the recovery effort and the search for answers.

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And the heat is building across the center part of the country. Some of the hottest weather of the summer season is on tap not only for today, but through the weekend and into next week.

We'll tell you who's going to get it coming up in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Word this morning of more U.S. troop deaths in Iraq. The military is saying a roadside bomb killed three soldiers Thursday. Eleven others were injured. The incident in eastern Baghdad. A fourth soldier was killed in combat in western Baghdad.

U.S. troop deaths fell in July to 80. There were more than 100 in each of the three previous months.

3,664 Americans have been killed since the war began.

HARRIS: Concerns about lead in toys from China presenting a safety risk for Americans. Mattel has recalled more than a million Chinese-made toys.

Here's CNN's Kitty Pilgrim.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lead poisoning in young children can lower I.Q., affect learning ability, and damage the liver and kidneys. But there are no immediate symptoms, so parents wouldn't notice if their child was ingesting lead from a toy.

DR. JAMES ROBERTS, MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA: Lead poisoning often starts without symptoms at all. They can be a normal child running around playing, but have an elevated blood-lead level, and you would never know it without testing them.

PILGRIM: Fisher-Price found lead paint on nearly a million Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego figures made in China between April and July of this year and imported into the United States.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says it's a particularly bad case. The lead was in the yellow paint surface coating the toys, a blatant disregard of the ban on lead paint in children's toys.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, manned with 100 field inspectors, is struggling against rampant Chinese violations of safety standards; 80 percent of all toys in the U.S. now come from China. And, from October last year, of the 306 recalls of products, 100 percent of recalled toys were made in China.

JOAN LAWRENCE, TOY INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION: There are a couple of bills being talked about in Congress that would enhance the safety system, and we would be in favor of those.

PILGRIM: While there is a ban on lead paint, there is no ban on lead content in children's jewelry. Since 2004, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled 165 million pieces of jewelry with lead that could leak out.

LORI WALLACH, PUBLIC CITIZEN: These kind of problems where you have really unsafe imported products flooding into our homes is going to continue until we change the trade rules.

PILGRIM: The CPSC wants a total ban on lead in children's jewelry by 2008.

Kitty Pilgrim, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: In Washington State this morning, four people are believed dead in a helicopter crash. The crash sparking a fire in the Cascade Mountains.

The blaze about 300 acres and growing now. Searchers cannot get to the crash site because of the spreading fire. The blaze is being fought from the sky with tanker planes and choppers. More firefighters head to the scene this morning.

HARRIS: And are you ready for an August heat wave?

COLLINS: No.

HARRIS: There's not much you can do about it. It's on the way.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COLLINS: Investigating the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Were there signs of trouble before the tragedy? CNN investigates after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Well, this is I-35W bridge. There are questions this morning about past problems.

CNN's Randi Kaye reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It may take years for investigators to figure out what brought this bridge down. "Keeping Them Honest," we wanted to know, whatever it was, could it have been prevented?

After all, two reports in the last six years noted this bridge had structural problems.

(on camera): A lot of people watching this, though, would say, how can a bridge that has been rated as structurally deficient still be in business? Help them understand.

DICK STEHLY, CIVIL ENGINEER: That's the maddening part of this. That is the one part of this that's extremely troubling.

KAYE (voice-over): In 2005, the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory Database called the bridge structurally deficient and possibly in need of replacement.

This same report shows, on a scale of one to nine, the bridge scored a four in overall structural quality. So, what did Minnesota's Department of Transportation, Mn/DOT, do about it?

DAN DORGAN, STATE BRIDGE ENGINEER, MN/DOT: The outcome of that was two choices for MN/DOT. One was adding plates to strengthen the bridge. The other was to do in-depth inspection of the areas that were thought to be the most susceptible and to verify that no cracks existed in those areas. And we chose the inspection route. KAYE (on camera): And there's more. The bridge scored just a 50 rating out of 120 overall, which meant replacement may have been in order.

So, why was the state of Minnesota, all the way up to the governor's office, telling us this bridge was safe? Governor Tim Pawlenty said the bridge got a clean bill of health in 2005 and 2006. Even the U.S. Department of Transportation is defending Mn/DOT.

MARY PETERS, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION: It was no means an indication that this bridge was not safe. None of those ratings indicated that there was -- there was any kind of danger here. It simply says, we need to schedule this bridge for rehabilitation.

KAYE (voice-over): Four years before that report, in 2001, University of Minnesota researchers published this report: "Fatigue Evaluation of the Deck Truss of Bridge 9340." They found "The bridge's deck truss system has not experienced fatigue cracking, but it has many poor fatigue details on the main truss and the floor truss system. If one member were severed by a fatigue crack, that plane of the main truss would theoretically collapse," just like what happened Wednesday.

Yet, the report concluded, "Fatigue cracking is not expected during the remaining useful life of the bridge."

Again, Mn/DOT inspected the bridge, which 141,000 people use daily.

DORGAN: At the time, we thought that the inspections and the information we had were adequate and satisfactory, that we were comfortable the bridge was fit for service. And, once again, of course, we -- we found that to be untrue.

KAYE: Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board will be studying these reports as they try to figure out what went wrong here.

(on camera): Civil Engineer Dick Stehly says, fatigue cracking, even corrosion, are easy to miss.

STEHLY: Cracking may be painted over, and you can't see cracks. In reinforced concrete, there can be some corrosion that you wouldn't you see because it's underneath.

KAYE (voice-over): Stehly isn't pointing fingers at Mn/DOT, but at the system overall. The time has come, he says, to raise the bar for safety.

STEHLY: It's not acceptable to have a bridge fall down. So, yes, it must. And the engineering community and the transportation community has let the public down. People have been killed because of this -- this catastrophic failure. We can't let it happen again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: The water relatively shallow but filled with danger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rebar, jagged metal from the cars. You know? You've got all that jagged metal from the fenders and stuff that's all buckled. You've got broken glass in the windows that you're reaching through.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: We'll tell you how divers train for this -- underwater rescue and recovery.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour. Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Tony Harris.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Heidi Collins. Good morning to you, everybody.

Remembering the victims and moving forward now with recovery. Here's what's happening in the Minnesota bridge collapse this morning.

The medical examiner telling us a fifth person has been confirmed dead. The victim's body recovered yesterday.

And this morning, divers are back in the Mississippi River searching the debris for victims. The sheriff calls conditions today, "very treacherous."

Investigators already examined the surveillance video of the bridge collapse, frame by frame now. The head of the NTSB calls the video, in fact, a key piece of evidence.

First Lady Laura Bush offering her support in a visit to the disaster scene. She will be there in about two hours. The president arrives on Saturday.

HARRIS: They were wives and mothers, husbands, fathers, heading home after a day at work. We now know the identifies of four of the five victims of the Minnesota bridge collapse. The news was a heartbreaking outcome of the daughters of one victim interviewed yesterday on CNN. Ann and Jessica Engebretsen were hoping against the odds that their mother had somehow managed to survive. Last evening they got the news they feared, their mother, Sherry, was among the first four victims identified by the medical examiner. In addition to Sherry Engebretsen, the other victims have been identified as 36-year- old Patrick Holmes, 29-year-old Artemio Trinidad-Mena and 32-year-old Julia Blackhawk.

COLLINS: Searching for bridge collapse victims, grueling and dangerous work. CNN's Anderson Cooper looked into the training rescuers go through.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) PETE GANNON, PLANTATION, FLORIDA FIRE DEPARTMENT: It's probably the furthest thing from your typical dive.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Underwater rescue is both dangerous and dirty work.

GANNON: It's a milk shake of contaminants. Gas, oil, hydraulic fluid, radiator fluid. It's a brand new suit. It's vulcanized rubber, so it doesn't -- your ordinary chemicals don't penetrate it. Gas, oil. You could actually dive in jet fuel and it wouldn't permeate that suit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In this type of situation you have to make it a cut tom fit.

GANNON: Yes. You can see it's going to be nice and tight around the wrist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why's that so important?

GANNON: So it doesn't leak. I don't want any of that stuff in me or on me. So you can see it's going to be pretty -- nice and snug.

COOPER: Suited up, the next step is always the survey.

GANNON: And you can drive by on the surface and actually see a car underwater or see a body underwater and know exactly where it is and drop a buoy on it and then the divers just drop down. You know, because you're going to have to hang on. And, you know, when you get on the very bottom, the current will slacken up a little bit. So the current's real strong on top and the lower you go, the lesser it gets.

COOPER: Underwater after a crash, the hazards are everywhere.

GANNON: Rebar. Jagged metal from the cars. You know, you've got all that jagged metal from the fenders and the stuff that's all buckled. You've got broken glass in the windows that you're reaching through. They're going to get caught in all kinds of debris, you know, just trying to get out there. You saw the rebar hanging. Now that rebar goes underwater. People don't realize I'm going to swim into that and now I'm in some kind of a cage and I can't see it. You know, it's like swimming into a shopping cart.

COOPER: The work down here is more than a one-man job. Someone always is supposed to have your back.

HERB NORTHWALTON, FIREFIGHTER: So much debris they have to go in, they need to have a spotters. You need to know how many divers are going in the water. You cannot just send everyone freelance and just to jump into the water.

In the event that he runs into troubles down there, he only -- he knows that someone's going to come to get him. That will be me. If I hesitate on going in, it could be fatal. So my job is very important.

COOPER: And for all the adrenaline, the divers are taught to assume the worst.

GANNON: It's a crime scene. You know, it was an accident but it could have been a crime and we don't know that yet. So we're going to treat it like a crime scene. Document everything. Slow down. Document.

I get scared. And I've done over 5,000 dives. I get scared. Until I hit the bottom, I take a good deep breath and then I'm OK. I don't know how deep I'm going. I can't see my gauging anymore.

COOPER: Anderson Cooper, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Rob Marciano joining us now live to give us a little bit more sense about these currents that we've been talking about in the Mississippi River at that point. Boy, they've been talking about it now for two days and saying actually today probably going to be even a tougher scenario for the divers because the water is moving so fast.

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And, Heidi, you know, you've lived up there. You were like, I don't remember that current moving so quickly. But, you know, when you get the low flow and the short depths and you get the dams right before where they're working, I mean, that kind of increases the velocity. So that's what they're dealing with.

The head waters of the Mississippi are well up into north central Minnesota. And it doesn't flow all that much, but they've got a series of these dams. Here's the bridge, when it was intact, by the way, with this high resolution Google Earth. We'll swing it around and look upriver just a little bit.

Saint Anthony's Falls, which is a fixture in Minneapolis, up there. And then there's another dam here with a lock. And you can see at the time when they took this picture, the flow was pretty good. By the way, there hasn't been a lot of rain this summer, so the flow relative to an average year is pretty low.

Regardless, they're working in a depth of anywhere from three feet to 11 feet. Yesterday they dropped the water down, thinking that would help them. They dropped it by like two feet, but that -- it's kind of like when there's a fast-moving stream and there's rocks.

Well, that creates more turbulence when you try to get around those rocks. Typically when a stream is flooded, everything's riding pretty smoothly and there's not as much turbulence. Well, they dropped it too low. They then lifted it back by another foot and today, for whatever reason, they say there's going to be even more of a problem.

And the Mississippi, up and down the Mississippi, it is far from clear. So when you're talking about, you know, turbulent waters, no matter how fast it's moving, and then you're talking about a visibility that's pretty low and all that junk and dangerous stuff that's in the river, it is, obviously, a dangerous job and a slow go of it today. So we wish them the best of luck in their recovery efforts.

They will, by the way, have very good weather above the water. I mean good viability. Temperatures will be in the mid-80s again today with plenty of sunshine. And thunderstorms expected tomorrow. So hopefully they get quite a bit of that work done today.

Heidi and Tony.

COLLINS: Right. We sure do hope so. At least it's going to be nicer up above ground though.

All right. Thank you, Rob.

MARCIANO: OK.

COLLINS: The Minneapolis bridge collapse has triggered a cross country review now of the nation's bridges. CNN will take an in-depth look at the issues and the bottom line question -- are we safe crossing them? Tonight in a CNN Special Investigations report, "We Were Warned: Road To Ruin." It airs tonight 8:00 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.

HARRIS: Making their mark in the Minnesota bridge collapse, firefighters, police officers, even passers by, they all pulled together to rescue survivors. One of those first responders was Fire Department Captain Shanna Hanson. She described to CNN's John Roberts what it was like diving into the Mississippi.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHANNA HANSON, FIRE DEPARTMENT CAPTAIN: Mine wasn't the first search of those vehicles. So you're really trying to be very thorough and check into all the spaces so that there's no possibility that somebody's in a space that didn't get checked. When people are going through on the first time, they're really trying to just get through it fast, find as many victims as they can as fast as they can. So when the secondary search goes on, you're kind of checking all the spots that might have gotten mixed. We had people ejected from some of the vehicles, so you're checking around, underneath the vehicle. And because the ground was so uneven because of all the slabs and debris under there, it kept changing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Boy, what a job. We will have much more of Shanna Hanson's story in just a few minutes.

COLLINS: Want to take a moment now to tell you a little bit more about what we are covering today and moving forward with the recovery effort in Minneapolis. The search for answers amid a tangled web of steel and concrete.

HARRIS: He stopped just a few feet short of the edge of the collapsed bridge and that's just the beginning of his story. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If you would have gotten out of your van down the ramp (INAUDIBLE) . . .

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By myself . . .

TUCHMAN: And you would have ended up in the river?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, with my wheelchair.

TUCHMAN: With your wheelchair. You would have rolled into the river.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: CNN's Gary Tuchman with one amazing bridge collapse survivor.

COLLINS: And there you have the opening bell. It happened just a few minutes ago on this Friday morning. We're going to be watching the Dow Jones Industrial averages for you, which right now are down one point, two points, 13,460 is where it's resting at, at this point. I'm told that the Nasdaq is also down by about three, I believe.

Susan Lisovicz is going to be coming up a little bit later to talk about something pretty interesting and the economic impact of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. So we'll have that for you coming up right here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Just a quick remind here. Our team is putting together a great podcast for you that will be available just a bit later today. We will bring you some stories of the Minnesota bridge collapse that perhaps you haven't seen yet. Once again, it is the CNN NEWSROOM podcast available to you 24/7. Download it today right on to your iPod.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: The horror of the bridge collapse heard in the voice of one terrified 10-year-old. Her name, Kaleigh Swift. She was one of a dozen of those kids that were coming home from a field trip on the bus and their school bus almost plunged off the buckling bridge. She called her mom minutes later. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KALEIGH SWIFT: Momma, the bridge broke when we were crossing it. And everybody -- everybody's scared and crying. Are you there, momma? Momma, are you there?

(END VIDEO CLIP) COLLINS: Oh, just breaks your heart, doesn't it? Incredibly all the kids got out of that bus thanks in no small part to Jeremy Hernandez. He is a camp counselor credited for getting everyone out in a hurry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEREMY HERNANDEZ, HELPED KIDS OFF BUS: I looked over at the river and then my heart started beating fast and I just jumped over the seats and I opened the back of the door and I kicked out the coolers out and then I turned around and tried to dump kids off of the bus. And all the kids were lining up on the bridge right there by the bus and I could feel the bridge still shaking and trying to tell them, you've got to get off the bridge, you've got to get off the bridge and then people are running up to the bridge, hand them to me and I'm handing kids over to the guys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Fourteen people on the bus were hurt but everyone survived.

HARRIS: Well, they were drawn to the bridge when it collapsed in a storm of dust and debris, heroes, professional and passers by. CNN's Ed Lavandera has that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): When the I-35 bridge collapsed, fire captain Shanna Hanson was at home. She heard the sirens and literally leapt into the terrifying scene on the Mississippi River.

CAPT. SHANNA HANSON, MINNEAPOLIS FIRE DEPARTMENT: I came across by the real cars that you see and just went from one roof to the next just working my way down.

LAVANDERA: After scaling down roof tops, Hanson jumped in the water and disappeared over and over, searching through submerged cars. But she would not find any survivors, only a 32-year-old woman who did not survive the fall. Hanson eventually met the woman's family. It was the only time this 16-year fire department veteran showed any emotion.

HANSON: And I'm very sorry for their loss and that -- I don't think I can -- to maintain professionalism, I'm just going to stop with that line of questioning.

LAVANDERA: But the first responders to this tragedy weren't all wearing uniforms. Two were union machinists, Chad Reichow and Jeremy Resendez (ph), working the late shift in this metal plant. We caught up with them as they were about to start another day of work.

You were coming -- going down this way, right?

CHAD REICHOW, VOLUNTEER RESCUER: Yes, I came going down this way. Yes. And then we all went outside. And that's when we seen the bridge was down. You know, cars were everywhere and it was kind of -- it was like an earthquake. Like it just crashed.

LAVANDERA: Chad and Jeremy worked with emergency crews, pulling people out of the water. There's one person, though, Chad can't stop thinking about. The only survivor he got a chance to talk to. But the only name he got was Reginald.

REICHOW: I just kept asking him if he was all right.

LAVANDERA: Chad was taking orders from a paramedic.

REICHOW: It's what the paramedic told me to do. He told me, you know, keep asking them questions, make sure he's still responding.

LAVANDERA: And he's still wondering what happened to Reginald after he was taken away in an ambulance. And now Chad understands why first responders have trouble talking about their work and often say they're just doing their job.

HANSON: You are not a firefighter if you seek the limelight. I hope you guys realize how hard this is to stand up here.

LAVANDERA: The talking is tough. The helping comes easy.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Minneapolis.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And those first responders have gotten numerous accolades already in the tragedy in Minneapolis. In fact, let's go straight there now live to our John Roberts who is standing by.

And, John, I understand you had a chance to talk with the Hennepin County sheriff to get a little bit more insight into how all of this, the rescuing, began.

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Actually I got a chance to talk with Shanna Hanson yesterday as well. She's a terrific woman. Very brave. Had nothing but kudos for her colleagues. So her humility made her even that much more heroic.

But I did spend some time with Rich Stanek, who's the Hennepin Country sheriff. He was going into some detail about the environment that the recovery workers are facing down there and how long this is going to take. You know, post- 9/11, law enforcement and emergency responders across the country have been training for disasters, but they haven't trained here in Minneapolis for anything like this.

When that bridge came down, it was just a complete shock to everyone. And so they're learning as they go along here. And one thing that they learned is, when you lower the level of the river, you do get better access to the debris and to the wreckage and to the cars that are submerged in the Mississippi River, but you also get along with it some attendant problems. They managed to use side scan sonar to clear the down river portion of the debris yesterday. Didn't find any more bodies. Found one car that came off the bridge during the collapse, a pickup truck that had been there for some time, some scaffolding and some debris.

It's the upstream part of the debris field that is giving them so much trouble because as they lowered the level of the river, they actually increase the speed of the current. Still waters run deep is the old saying. The shallower you get, the faster the water runs. And that's created some dangerous back eddies (ph).

As you can imagine, there's so much debris, concrete, big pieces of metal, those big i-beam structures that were the trusses for the bridge, and a lot of reinforcing rod. And to put a diver down there at this point is very hazardous. So they're having to go very slowly here. Almost recalculate the way that they're going through that debris field.

And in doing that they've increased the amount of time that it's going to take for them to get through it. Heidi, it could be by the end of the weekend now by the time they get through all of those cars. The water's as much as 13 to 15 feet deep in that area. And also with the debris, what's left over from the bridge being so unstable, there are areas where they can't put their divers in yet. So they're just trying to figure out how they can get into those little pockets, those very dangerous pockets, where they believe some people might be trapped.

The good news in all of this, though, if there is any good news in this major bridge collapse and tragedy that Minneapolis has suffered, is that the number of missing has been reduced dramatically. It was initially 20 to 30. As late as yesterday, early afternoon, that has now been reduced to only eight people missing, Heidi. So the death toll did go up by one. Number of missing down by a factor of three.

COLLINS: Yes, it certainly seems like good news. But I still, John, I can't get over when I look at the pictures, just -- of a bridge that I've been familiar with for so long. It really does -- and you mentioned this yesterday -- look like an earthquake hit. I know you were out for the Northridge earthquake in California. It's just fascinating to me that it went down the way that it did. Do you know -- NTSB, we've been hearing, the chairman anyway, Rosenker, said that he feels like he's getting a lot of information. Very happy with the progress of the investigation so far.

ROBERTS: They're getting a lot of information, mostly from video that was taken. That surveillance video that we've been showing on CNN. They also had some other video, which has not been released publicly yet, which he seemed to indicate shows the entire collapse. It would be fascinating to watch that.

We have heard reports that they're narrowing down -- this is not necessarily the NTSB, but observers have narrowed down the point of collapse to that center span of the bridge. That 390 long section that actually traversed the river. One thing I did get from Rosenker was the fact that, you know, as we saw with the Bay Bridge in the 1989 earthquake, as we saw recently in Oakland with another part of that Bay Bridge, small sections collapse. In this case, the whole bridge let go. I asked Rosenker what lead to that. He said, because when this bridge was built back in 1967, there wasn't a lot of redundancy built into it. So if one part of that span lets go, the entire bridge lets go. It's the fact that in 1967 they weren't aware of that type of problem.

Bridges are built differently now. I mean you'll remember back in the 1930s when that Tacoma Narrows Bridge was built, they didn't know about harmonic frequency that could actually twist a bridge back and forth like a piece of taffy if the wind reaches a certain speed. So now they've since learned how to build redundancies into this bridge so that if one piece lets go, the whole thing doesn't go. But, of course, we have (INAUDIBLE) results even from a small portion of the bridge being let go.

COLLINS: Yes, it is absolutely unbelievable. And coming up a little bit later on, we are going to be talking with the former governor of California because he's got such experience with this. We mentioned those two incidents out there in California.

John Roberts, thanks so much, live from Minneapolis this morning.

Now impacting your world. The tragedy in Minneapolis has touched people across the country and moved many to do what they can to help. You can find more about the disaster, as well as what you can do to help at cnn.com/specials.

HARRIS: Following the money. From Washington to America's crumbling bridges, where are the billions set aside for road repair?

COLLINS: Water treatment. Power plants. How safe are we?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CASEY DINGES, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS: Many times infrastructure systems are underground, out of sight, out of mind and there's decaying and degradation going on that we don't even see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: More of America's aging infrastructure.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: You are sharing your stories and images of the Minnesota bridge collapse. Some amazing i-Reports to show you now this morning. Steve Deworak (ph) says he got to the scene about 15 minutes after the bridge fell. He used a digital camera to capture these pictures from about 50 feet away or so. If you have photos, video or eyewitness stories about the bridge collapse, send them to cnn.com. Just click on i-Report and it will walk you through the process.

The search for answers amid a tangled web of steel and concrete.

HARRIS: One catastrophe, many moments of terror.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Cars don't seem like they're straight anymore. They're, you know, kind of tilted. And the construction barrels kind of, you know, off in the air. And I swear I saw a construction worker, you know, in midair.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Boy, another amazing story from a survivor. Details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Good morning to you, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins.

HARRIS: And I'm Tony Harris. Stay informed all day in the CNN NEWSROOM. Here's what's on the rundown.

The Minnesota bridge collapse. What went wrong? Today, a new death toll and a renewed search for victims.

COLLINS: Counting the cost. Many American bridges in need of repair. Is the money there? And if not, where is it?

HARRIS: And new this morning, police raid a well-known bakery in California. More than a dozen people detained. We are monitoring new developments in the NEWSROOM.

COLLINS: Dangerous river currents slowing the search now for victims.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.voxant.com