US:Federal transport investigators began work yesterday to establish the cause of the catastrophic collapse of the Mississippi bridge that had been classified as "structurally deficient" two years ago.
The police put the official death toll at four but predicted that would rise, confirming that rescuers had seen other bodies trapped in submerged cars. Up to 30 people are missing.
In spite of danger from tangled steel girders and unstable concrete blocks, divers were trying to recover the bodies.
The local police chief, Tim Dolan, said recovery would take days: "The bridge is still shifting. We're dealing with the Mississippi river. We're dealing with currents. We're going to have to do it slowly and safely." The collapse highlights again the lack of investment by the world's superpower in much of its infrastructure, including roads, bridges, dams and, in the case of New Orleans, the levee system.
The bridge, linking Minneapolis and St Paul, buckled during the evening rush hour. Survivors and witnesses told how sections had dropped 19.5m into the river, throwing up a wave of water and a dust cloud. Cars, vans and other vehicles were tossed into the river. "Boom, boom, boom and we were just dropping, dropping, dropping," said Jamie Winegar, a survivor.
Another survivor, Berndt Toivonen, said: "The bridge started to buckle. It went up, and it came down." A bus carrying 52 children returning from a trip to a water park was left precariously perched on the bridge but the passengers all managed to escape through a rear exit.
In a US transport department inventory two years ago, the bridge received a safety rating of only 50 on a scale that runs to 120. A score of 80 suggests some rehabilitation may be necessary while a score of 50 suggests replacement.
But White House spokesman Tony Snow said: "This doesn't mean there was a risk of failure but if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions." Amid conflicting accounts, the governor, Tim Pawlenty, said on Wednesday night that the bridge had been inspected in 2005 and 2006 and that no structural deficiencies had been found.
President George Bush, whose sharp drop in poll ratings can be traced back to the slowness of his response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, promised yesterday that the federal government would provide funding to have the bridge rebuilt as quickly as possible.
"We in the federal government must respond, and respond robustly, to help the people there not only recover, but to make sure that lifeline of activity - that bridge - gets rebuilt as quickly as possible," he said.
The transport secretary, Mary Peters, who promised $5 million (€3.7m) to clear the site, said no bridge in the US should collapse. Democratic senators expressed concern about the poor state of the nation's infrastructure.
There had been construction work under way on the bridge at the time of the collapse, including the use of pneumatic drills, and investigators will look at whether that contributed to the collapse. Some of the 18 construction workers slipped down fallen slabs and one of them is missing.
The bridge, built in 1967, is a single 139m steel arch, which avoids putting any piers in the water that might impede river traffic and is also a cheaper option.
There are other similar bridges in the US.