Minn. prepares to dispose of I-35W bridge parts

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota is preparing to give victims, historians and engineers a chance to claim some of the crumpled steel wreckage from the deadly 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge before the rest is sold for scrap.

Aug. 1 marks the six-year anniversary of when the bridge buckled and fell into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour in downtown Minneapolis, killing 13 people and injuring 145 others. The Minnesota Department of Transportation had to store the bridge's steel beams and plates until all the legal claims could be resolved, spokesman Kevin Gutknecht said. The final lawsuit was settled last November.

"There are some folks who were directly involved with the collapse who are interested in having a piece as a memento," Gutknecht said.

The Minnesota House on Monday unanimously passed a bill to give MnDOT six months to parcel out free pieces to victims' families, collapse survivors, the Minnesota Historical Society and certain other people or institutions with a connection to the bridge or transportation safety. The bill still awaits Senate action.

State officials expect to give away 121 tons of the 3,380 tons of steel. The remainder would be sold to metal recyclers, generating about $645,000 for the state, which would cover a tiny fraction of the millions paid out to survivors in compensation.

Helen Hausman, whose husband, Peter Hausman, died in the collapse, said it's only right that victims' families should get the chance to claim some steel.

"It's like a weapon that killed their loved ones," Hausman said, adding that she intends to give her piece to her church, which plans to use it to create a small memorial.

Survivor Garrett Ebling already has a piece of the bridge — a chunk of concrete the size of a fist that was found in his car after it was fished out of the river. He uses it as a paperweight and teaching aid when he speaks to groups about the collapse and his long road to recovery.

Ebling suffered severe internal injuries, broken bones and post-traumatic stress disorder, and still deals daily with physical pain. He's getting counseling and said publishing a memoir on his experiences last year has helped him move forward.

Now, he wants a small piece of the steel, too.

"I hope I'm not going to end up with a giant beam I could put in my yard," Ebling cracked.

Gutknecht acknowledged that most of the metal pieces, which have been sitting in a MnDOT yard in suburban Afton since 2010, are big and heavy.

"We can certainly cut some down to hand-carryable size," he said.

Still to be determined is the fate of the most crucial pieces — the gusset plates that the National Transportation Safety Board said caused the collapse, breaking because they were too thin. Gutknecht said all the key pieces studied by the NTSB are in storage at a separate MnDOT facility in Oakdale.

First dibs on everything goes to the Minnesota Historical Society, according to the state legislation.

Senior Curator Adam Sher said it's possible the society will ask for those plates.

"We have other artifacts that were related to the bridge collapse. I think it would be appropriate for us to consider a piece of the actual bridge, but we would need to consider the condition and size, and what might be useful for the interpretation of the event," Sher said.

The society is currently displaying the back door from a school bus that was on the bridge and fell at least 30 feet, autographed by all the more than 50 students aboard.

"It's a very tangible reminder of an event that impacted people in a very direct and tragic way," Sher said. "And so it's important to preserve those kinds of artifacts and tell their story. But is difficult sometimes to deal with issues that are tragic, but it also is something we can't forget."

The University of St. Thomas hopes for a small piece, perhaps a beam, to remind engineering students of the responsibilities they face.

It would be used to display the steel rings given to students as they're inducted into the Order of the Engineer. Students across the country accept those rings as they pledge to uphold the standards of their profession.

Don Weinkauf, dean of the School of Engineering at St. Thomas, said using the bridge steel in those ceremonies "will be a powerful connection to that ideal. ... We convey to them in a very real sense that the things they create and design and build will touch people's lives."

___

Associated Press writer Brian Bakst contributed to this story from St. Paul, Minn.

View the original article here

Minn. prepares to dispose of I-35W bridge parts

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota is preparing to give victims, historians and engineers a chance to claim some of the crumpled steel wreckage from the deadly 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge before the rest is sold for scrap.

Aug. 1 marks the six-year anniversary of when the bridge buckled and fell into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour in downtown Minneapolis, killing 13 people and injuring 145 others. The Minnesota Department of Transportation had to store the bridge's steel beams and plates until all the legal claims could be resolved, spokesman Kevin Gutknecht said. The final lawsuit was settled last November.

"There are some folks who were directly involved with the collapse who are interested in having a piece as a memento," Gutknecht said.

The Minnesota House on Monday unanimously passed a bill to give MnDOT six months to parcel out free pieces to victims' families, collapse survivors, the Minnesota Historical Society and certain other people or institutions with a connection to the bridge or transportation safety. The bill still awaits Senate action.

State officials expect to give away 121 tons of the 3,380 tons of steel. The remainder would be sold to metal recyclers, generating about $645,000 for the state, which would cover a tiny fraction of the millions paid out to survivors in compensation.

Helen Hausman, whose husband, Peter Hausman, died in the collapse, said it's only right that victims' families should get the chance to claim some steel.

"It's like a weapon that killed their loved ones," Hausman said, adding that she intends to give her piece to her church, which plans to use it to create a small memorial.

Survivor Garrett Ebling already has a piece of the bridge — a chunk of concrete the size of a fist that was found in his car after it was fished out of the river. He uses it as a paperweight and teaching aid when he speaks to groups about the collapse and his long road to recovery.

Ebling suffered severe internal injuries, broken bones and post-traumatic stress disorder, and still deals daily with physical pain. He's getting counseling and said publishing a memoir on his experiences last year has helped him move forward.

Now, he wants a small piece of the steel, too.

"I hope I'm not going to end up with a giant beam I could put in my yard," Ebling cracked.

Gutknecht acknowledged that most of the metal pieces, which have been sitting in a MnDOT yard in suburban Afton since 2010, are big and heavy.

"We can certainly cut some down to hand-carryable size," he said.

Still to be determined is the fate of the most crucial pieces — the gusset plates that the National Transportation Safety Board said caused the collapse, breaking because they were too thin. Gutknecht said all the key pieces studied by the NTSB are in storage at a separate MnDOT facility in Oakdale.

First dibs on everything goes to the Minnesota Historical Society, according to the state legislation.

Senior Curator Adam Sher said it's possible the society will ask for those plates.

"We have other artifacts that were related to the bridge collapse. I think it would be appropriate for us to consider a piece of the actual bridge, but we would need to consider the condition and size, and what might be useful for the interpretation of the event," Sher said.

The society is currently displaying the back door from a school bus that was on the bridge and fell at least 30 feet, autographed by all the more than 50 students aboard.

"It's a very tangible reminder of an event that impacted people in a very direct and tragic way," Sher said. "And so it's important to preserve those kinds of artifacts and tell their story. But is difficult sometimes to deal with issues that are tragic, but it also is something we can't forget."

The University of St. Thomas hopes for a small piece, perhaps a beam, to remind engineering students of the responsibilities they face.

It would be used to display the steel rings given to students as they're inducted into the Order of the Engineer. Students across the country accept those rings as they pledge to uphold the standards of their profession.

Don Weinkauf, dean of the School of Engineering at St. Thomas, said using the bridge steel in those ceremonies "will be a powerful connection to that ideal. ... We convey to them in a very real sense that the things they create and design and build will touch people's lives."

___

Associated Press writer Brian Bakst contributed to this story from St. Paul, Minn.

View the original article here

Pentagon prepares to ask Congress for break from 'sequester'

By David Lawder and David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress soon for more authority to shift funds to cope with automatic spending cuts, confronting lawmakers with another exception to the "sequester" just days after they gave a break to the flying public and the airline industry.

The request may be sent to the House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee as early as next week, a House Republican aide said on Wednesday.

The Pentagon won increased budget flexibility in March, but officials have told members of Congress they believe it was insufficient to cover shortfalls in training and operations.

The Defense Department move would follow closely the fix last week to ease airline flight delays caused by the temporary furloughs of air-traffic controllers by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The cuts, known as "sequestration," were originally hatched by Washington in 2011 as a way to force the White House and Congress to find an alternative budget deal rather than have spending cuts kick in automatically.

But policymakers failed to reach such a deal earlier this year and the cuts - totaling $109 billion for the current fiscal year - took effect on March 1.

Defense spending has taken the single biggest hit from the automatic cuts, with a $46 billion reduction through the September 30 end of the fiscal year.

One House aide said the request would cite a shortfall in war-fighting because of higher than expected costs of withdrawing from Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials paved the way for the move in testimony to congressional committees over the past few weeks in which they expressed worries about the sequester's impact on military readiness, particularly with tensions rising in Syria and Korea.

"With the events in the world today, with Korea, Syria, Iran, the continued fight in Afghanistan ... the discussion on readiness could not come at a more critical time," General John Campbell, Army vice chief of staff, told a U.S. Senate panel on April 17.

"The reality is that if sequestration continues as it is ... we risk becoming a hollow force," he added.

Members of Congress from states with a heavy military presence have been urging a shift of funds since the sequester took effect and might be hard-pressed to vote against it.

An April 18 bipartisan letter from Virginia senators and representatives urged Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to move quickly to prevent furloughs and loss of pay for "thousands of Virginians."

'REPROGRAMMING'

The Defense Department is preparing the request to shift funds, said Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Robbins, a Pentagon spokeswoman, but has not "yet specified the timing or the amount" it wants to transfer, or "reprogram" in budget jargon.

Congress last week approved a similar request from the Justice Department to shift $313 million within its budget to avoid furloughing some 60,000 employees.

Robbins said it was not yet clear whether the Pentagon would submit several different reprogramming requests or one large omnibus-style request, but the budget shifts would be sought "soon."

The Pentagon was one of several government agencies that won some budget flexibility in a stop-gap government funding measure passed in late March.

That allowed more than $10 billion that was locked up in other accounts to be shifted to the Pentagon's operations and maintenance account, which funds training exercises and military readiness.

While that has helped, it did not make up for the deep budget cuts brought on by the sequester. The Army alone is facing about a $13 billion shortfall in training, operations and Afghanistan war costs, Army Secretary John McHugh and Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno told lawmakers last week.

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Peter Cooney)

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