Unfortunately I'm not a bike commuter but I lurk around here sometimes and thought this was a crazy enough story to pass on. I don't know the person in this story personally but they are a friend of my parents neighbors (long series of connections but that is the gist of it). Anyways the neighbors forwarded this account from him to my mom earlier and I thought some of you guys might want to read it:
I can safely say that last night's bike commute home from work was a
> disaster. I took my usual route from downtown St. Paul to Brooklyn
> Center which takes me all the way up the West River Road from Fort
> Snelling. I was under the 10th street bridge climbing the hill on the
> bike path when I heard a crunching noise. I had my headphones on so
> this wasn't too loud. Then I looked up and saw a cloud of white dust.
> It looked like a mist of water and I thought the St. Anthony dam just
> broke. Then I tasted cement and saw the path just ahead of me covered
> in rubble. So I thought part of the bridge must have broke (because I
> couldn't see the whole bridge through the dust) and my first thought
> was "boy I'm glad I wasn't 20 seconds faster today".
>
> I turned off my headphones and it was silent except for an eerie sound
> (that reminded me of a horror movie) of many people moaning and crying.
> I leaned my bike against a tree, walked closer and saw all the cars and
> damage. Because of the groaning and moaning I knew I had to climb up
> onto the roadbed to see if I could help anyone. I'm pretty sure I was
> one of the first people on the scene and I didn't really worry about
> the road breaking further, especially since I had a helmet on which I
> wasn't about to take off (yes that was my yellow helmet mentioned in
> the news).
>
> So I first went to where a black car was bridged across the crack with
> another car on top of it that had three people in it. I told them they
> needed to get out and the woman passenger said she thought they were on
> top of another car and that she was too scared to get out and just
> wanted to hold my hand. I told her that they were on the car but that
> it was wedged in pretty good and didn't look like it would budge if
> they tried to get out. After holding her hand for a short time I left
> downslope to one of the other 5 or 6 cars with people still in them.
> These cars were parked on a pretty steep slope that made it quite
> slippery (at least I was wearing my mountain bike shoes and not my road
> bike shoes).
>
> Most of the people in these cars were speechless and in shock (none
> were hysterical) so I just calmly told them there was a route off the
> bridge because I just came on that way, and that I'd walk with them
> over there. This seemed to help convince them to get out of their cars,
> so I did this with four or five people. One woman was on her cell and
> she said something to the effect of "I'm telling you it collapsed
> and I'm still stuck on it." Another woman had high heels on and she
> was slipping badly until I held on to her waist while she took them off.
> There was a steep piece of cement they had to climb down to get onto
> the bank so I suggested they do a crabwalk down it, and that seemed to
> work but some had more difficulty than others. The scariest thing then
> happened when I put my foot on a large broken piece of cement while
> helping a large woman into her crablike stance. The cement piece broke
> loose and slid down towards another woman who was almost to the bank.
> My heart about stopped watching it slide towards her but luckily it
> missed by about three feet.
>
> Then the last person on that section of road, a man with an injured
> hand who I think was in the red car at the very bottom, walked off just
> as the first rescue help arrived. A rescue worker yelled that everyone
> should get off the bridge and I thought "hey, good idea." I told
> him that this man with the hurt hand was the last one off this section
> and I then retreated into the crowd now forming along the River Road. I
> noticed that it was about 6:25 so I figure it took about 15-20 minutes
> to help get those ten or so people off that section.
**Edit** Some amazing pictures here:
http://flickr.com/photos/s4xton/sets...57770382/show/