Tornado destroys and kills at Boy Scout camp in Iowa.
BLENCOE, Iowa Boy Scouts who came to each others' aid after a tornado that killed four of their comrades and injured 48 people were hailed as heroes Thursday for helping to administer first aid and search for victims buried in their flattened campsite. Labels: boys, disasters, weather
Iowa rescue workers cut through downed branches and dug through debris amid rain and lightning Wednesday night to reach the camp where the 93 boys, ages 13 to 18, had huddled for safety through the twister. They and 25 staff members were attending a weeklong leadership training camp.
Lloyd Roitstein, an executive with the Mid America Council of the Boy Scouts of America, reminded reporters at a news conference Thursday that the Boy Scouts motto is "Be Prepared."
"Last night, the agencies and the scouts were prepared," he said. "They knew what to do, they knew where to go, and they prepared well."
Iowa Gov. Chet Culver praised the boys for "taking care of each other."
The tornado through the scout camp killed three 13-year-olds and one 14-year-old, Roitstein said. A tornado siren went off at the camp, but the scouts had already taken cover before the siren sounded. There was no time to remove them from the isolated retreat, he said.
The boys had been in two groups when the storm hit the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in the Loess Hills. One group managed to take shelter, while the other was out hiking.
Boy Scout officials identified the dead as Aaron Eilerts, 14, of Eagle Grove, Iowa and Josh Fennen, 13, Sam Thomsen, 13, and Ben Petrzilka, 14, all of Omaha.
At least 42 of the injured remained hospitalized Thursday morning, with everything from cuts and bruises to major head trauma, said Eugene Meyer, Iowa's public safety commissioner.
Three were flown to Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City, Iowa, and a fourth was taken there by ambulance. All were listed in serious condition.
All the scouts and staff were accounted for, Meyer said, adding that searchers were making another pass through the grounds to make sure no one else was injured. The camp was destroyed.
Thomas White, a scout supervisor, said he dug through the wreckage of a collapsed fireplace to reach victims in a building where many scouts were seeking shelter when the twister struck at about 6:35 p.m.
"A bunch of us got together and started undoing the rubble from the fireplace and stuff and waiting for the first responders," White told KMTV in Omaha, Neb. "They were under the tables and stuff and on their knees, but they had no chance."
The nearest tornado siren, in nearby Blencoe, sounded only briefly after the storm cut power to the town, said Russ Lawrenson of the Mondamin Fire Department.
Taylor Willoughby, 13, said several scouts were getting ready to watch a movie when someone screamed that there was a tornado. Everyone hunkered down, he said, and windows shattered.
"It sounded like a jet that was flying by really close," Taylor told NBC's "Today" on Thursday. "I was hoping that we all made it out OK. I was afraid for my life."
Ethan Hession, also 13, said he crawled under a table with his friend.
"I just remember looking over at my friend, and all of a sudden he just says to me, 'Dear God, save us,'" he told "Today." "Then I just closed my eyes and all of a sudden it's (the tornado) gone."
Ethan said the scouts' first-aid training immediately compelled them to act.
"We knew that we need to place tourniquets on wounds that were bleeding too much. We knew we need to apply pressure and gauze. We had first-aid kits, we had everything," he said.
Ethan said one staff member took off his shirt and put it on someone who was bleeding to apply pressure and gauze. Other scouts started digging people out of the rubble, he said.
The injured were taken to Burgess Health Center in Onawa, Alegent Health Clinic in Missouri Valley and Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha.
The 1,800-acre ranch about 40 miles north of Omaha includes hiking trails through narrow valleys and over steep hills, a 15-acre lake and a rifle range.
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Woman survives 195 hours buried in rubble from China's earthquake.
CHENGDU, China (CNN) -- A woman who survived on rainwater has been freed after being trapped in rubble for 195 hours in the aftermath of the Chinese earthquake, which has now killed more than 40,000. The 60-year-old woman escaped with just facial bruises and a minor fracture during her eight-day ordeal. Labels: China, disasters, epic, health news
The official Xinhua news agency identified her as Wang Youqun, a retiree, and said she had been unconscious for a day when a falling girder hit her head in the May 12 quake, The Associated Press reported.
She was apparently trapped in a landslide that swept away a temple in the city of Pengzhou and was intially able to move, but a later aftershock trapped her between two rocks, according to AP.
Her dramatic discovery came hours after rescue teams pulled two men men from the rubble in Sichuan province.
One of the men was found in a mine in Qingchuna county and a second in a hydroelectric plant in Wenchuan county, state-run media reported.
They had been buried for six days and 20 hours and seven days and 11 hours, respectively, according to China's Xinhua news agency.
The rescues give a glimmer of hope amid the rising daily death toll. Official figures show the number of victims has risen to 40,075 in the Sichuan province alone.
The United States announced Tuesday it would send a shipment of specialized recovery equipment and a team of specialists to southwestern China this week. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) says more than $815,000 worth of additional assistance will be sent to China.
That brings the total USAID assistance to China to more than $1.3 million. Last weekend, the United States sent U.S. Air Force C-17s carrying aid to China, including tents and generators.
After signing a sympathy book with the first lady at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, President Bush vowed to "stand ready to help in any way the Chinese government would like."
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Elevator Hell
NEW YORK - A time-lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours has become something of an Internet sensation after surveillance camera footage emerged after nearly a decade. Labels: disasters, epic, new york city, you tube
"After a certain period of time I knew that I was in pretty big trouble because it was the weekend," Nicholas White said Monday on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America."
Video of his Oct. 15, 1999, ordeal in an elevator in New York's McGraw-Hill building was posted online to accompany an article in the April 21 edition of The New Yorker. It can be seen on the magazine's Web site and had been viewed more than 280,000 times on YouTube by Monday morning.
White said he understood why the video has captured people's attention: So many have wondered what they would do if it happened to them.
Edited to a soundtrack of classical piano music, the video shows him pacing, trying to climb the walls, lying down, curled up in a fetal position, prying apart the doors. (He said he relieved himself down the shaft when the doors were open.)
White sued the managers of the midtown skyscraper and the elevator maintenance company and won an undisclosed settlement.
He was a production manager for Business Week when he left his office about 11 p.m. Friday for a cigarette break. According to the article, it was never determined exactly why the elevator stalled though there was talk of a voltage dip.
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Pyro accident during Wrestlemania causes injuries.
What was supposed to be a celebration after another successful Wrestlemania, ended up with dozens of people injured when fireworks and cables landed on part of a near sell-out crowd at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando on Sunday night. Labels: disasters, Florida, sports news, television
Orlando Fire Department spokesman Greg Hoggatt says a cable holding the fireworks collapsed at the end of the show. The collapse sent sparkles from fireworks into the crowd. He says there were burn injuries, "up and down the stadium."
The show experienced a problem earlier in the show when power was temporarily lost to the lights surrounding the ring, leaving the announced crew confused as to what was going on.
At least 40 people were injured when the fireworks and cable collapsed. Officials say all the injuries were minor, but at least three people were taken to area hospitals.
World Wrestling Entertainment has had serious problems at a pay-per-view event in the past, most notably, the death of wrestler Owen Hart, who fell from a scaffold atop the ring while preparing for a stunt.
The Associated Press reported the phone number for the press relations office at the WWE Corporate Headquarters stayed busy for much of the day. Stadium officials have yet to comment on the story. The WWE typically launches fireworks as a show begins and multiple times during a show as certain wrestlers enter a venue.
The company released this statement on the accident:
"We're investigating the incident and doing everything we can to find out why it happened and to make sure it never happens again. While we apologize to anyone who was injured and/or alarmed by this occurrence, we take solace in the fact that the reported injuries were minor."
Estimates for last night's crowd for Wrestlemania topped 74,000.
(Ed note: I hate TMZ but here is the link to the video. Obviously Undertaker should leave the pyro to his brother, Kane.)
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Update: Half-dozen dead in Savannah.
Six bodies were found in the rubble of a sugar refinery that exploded and burned Thursday night, according to authorities. Labels: disasters, local news
Savannah-Chatham Police Chief Michael Berkow said rescue efforts had shifted from a rescue to a recovery operation because the building is too unstable for firefighters to enter.
About 40 workers were injured, many critically, in the blast. Of those treated at Memorial University Medical, 19 were flown to Augusta to the Joseph M. Still Burn Centers in Augusta, where 15 were reported to be in critical condition.
Hospital officials in Augusta told Channel 4 that most of the patients were on ventilators. They put out a plea for blood to assist their efforts.
Officials had not determined what caused the explosion Thursday night but said they suspect sugar dust, which can be volatile.
"There was fire all over the building," said Nakishya Hill, a machine operator who escaped from the third floor of the refinery on the Savannah River.
"All I know is, I heard a loud boom and everything came down," said Hill, who was uninjured except for blisters on her elbow. "All I could do when I got down was take off running."
The fire was partially contained early Friday, said Capt. Matthew Stanley of the Savannah Fire Department. "We have diminished it considerably, but we're still struggling to get to parts of it," he said.
The fire had been extinguished in the area where the explosion happened, but structural damage was keeping firefighters out, Stanley said.
Ninety-five to 100 people were believed to be working in that area, authorities said.
Firefighters hoped to enter the area Friday. Authorities also were talking with the military about bringing in Chinook helicopters to dump water on the fire, Stanley said.
Police Lt. Alan Baker and his wife, Joyce, told CNN they were among the first on the scene. Alan Baker said he went with a maintenance worker to turn off a gas main while his wife, a Red Cross first aid instructor, treated the injured.
"It was like walking into hell," Joyce Baker said. "We had approximately 13 men who were coming out and they were burned, third-degree burns on their upper bodies. And they were trying to sit down and the only thing that they wanted was to know where the friends were."
Some of the burned men had "no skin at all" and some had skin "just dripping off them," Baker said.
Michael Notrica, spokesman for Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, said 33 injured people were brought there from the plant explosion Thursday night. Of those, seven were treated and released and 19 were flown to a burn center in Augusta. Seven people remained in the Savannah hospital Friday in serious or critical condition, Notrica said.
Beth Frits, a spokeswoman for the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, said 15 fire victims were there Friday in critical condition and three in serious condition. Officials said the 19th person sent from the Savannah hospital was en route Friday morning to the Augusta burn center.
The plant is owned by Imperial Sugar and is known in Savannah as the Dixie Crystals plant.
"A far as we know, it was a sugar dust explosion," Imperial Sugar CEO John Sheptor said. He said it happened in a storage silo where refined sugar is stored until it is packaged.
Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Lynn said the river was closed to ship traffic from the Port of Savannah while the river was searched for possible victims.
"It's a large facility, and there is still a significant amount of fire," said Clayton Scott, assistant director of Chatham County Emergency Management Agency. He described the refinery as covering an area the size of a Super Wal-Mart.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board said Friday it is sending an investigative team to the plant.
Sugar dust is combustible, according the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration's Web site. Static electricity, sparks from metal tools or a cigarette can ignite explosions. Sugar dust is suspected of sparking a nonfatal explosion last summer at a factory in Scottsbluff, Neb., and one that killed a worker in Omaha in 1996.
Imperial Sugar, based in Sugar Land, Texas, acquired Savannah Foods & Industries, the producer of Dixie Crystals, in 1997. The acquisition doubled the size of the company, making it the largest processor and refiner of sugar in the U.S., according to the company's Web site.
Imperial markets some of the country's leading consumer brands, Imperial, Dixie Crystals and Holly, as well as supplying sugar and sweetener products to industrial food manufacturers.
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Savannah Sugar Plant Explodes
More than 30 people were seriously injured Thursday night when an explosion rocked a sugar refinery near Savannah. Labels: disasters, local news
The explosion occurred shortly before 7:30 p.m. in a back room of the Imperial Sugar Co. facility, but the cause of the blast was unknown, said Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police spokesman Sgt. Mike Wilson. Wilson said 38 were carried to hospitals with serious injuries, but no fatalities had been confirmed at 11 p.m.
Five people were still unaccounted for shortly after 11 p.m., Wilson said.
Of the 38 seriously injured, 12 were taken to Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctor's Hospital in Augusta for treatment of severe burns. Several dozen others had minor injuries.
The plant, known to locals as the Dixie Crystals factory, an area landmark, is in Port Wentworth, about seven miles outside Savannah, and near the Savannah River.
Emergency personnel spent the first hour pulling people out of the building, officials said, and struggled to stop the spread of the fire.
"There was fire all over the building," said Nakishya Hill, a machine operator who said she escaped from the third floor of the refinery, near the Savannah River.
"All I know is, I heard a loud boom and everything came down," said Hill, who was uninjured except for blisters on her elbow.
"When I got up, I went down and found a couple of people and we climbed out of there from the third floor to the first floor. Half of the floor was gone. The second floor was debris, the first floor was debris. All I could do when I got down was take off running," she said.
After the explosion, the Chatham County Emergency Management Agency activated its emergency and hazardous materials response plan.
More than 100 police and firefighters came to the scene, and a triage was set up to treat the wounded, who were loaded onto ambulances.
At about 9 p.m., firefighters were reporting trouble with water pressure and were attempting to tap into a 500,000-gallon water tank on the refinery's property. About two hours later, with water pressure problems continuing, fire officials decided to divert water from homes along I-95. Tugboats on the nearby Savannah River converged and turned water cannons onto the blaze.
Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Lynn said the river was shut down to ship traffic while the river was searched for possible victims.
"It's a large facility, and there is still a significant amount of fire," said Clayton Scott, assistant director of Chatham County Emergency Management Agency. He described the refinery as covering an area the size of a Super Wal-Mart.
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Auntie Em, Auntie Em
Lafayette, Tenn. Residents in five Southern states tried to salvage what they could Wednesday from homes reduced to piles of debris, a day after the deadliest cluster of tornadoes in nearly a decade tore through the region, snapping trees and crumpling homes. At least 52 people were dead. Labels: disasters
Rescue crews, some with the help of the National Guard, went door-to-door looking for more victims. Dozens of twisters were reported as the storms swept through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.
Seavia Dixon, whose Atkins, Ark., home was shattered, stood Wednesday morning in her yard, holding muddy baby pictures of her son, who is now a 20-year-old soldier in Iraq. Only a concrete slab was left from the home.
The family's brand new white pickup truck was upside-down, about 150 yards from where it was parked before the storm. Another pickup truck the family owned sat crumpled about 50 feet from the slab.
"You know, it's just material things," Dixon said, her voice breaking. "We can replace them. We were just lucky to survive."
In many places, the storms struck as Super Tuesday primaries were ending. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.
Twenty-eight people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and four in Alabama, emergency officials said. Among the victims were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old daughter in Atkins when they stayed behind to calm their horses. The community town of about 3,000 some 60 miles northwest of Little Rock was among the hardest hit.
Shannon Barnes, his mother and her husband waited out the storm in the basement of the woman's house near the St. Vincent community, not far from Atkins. After not hearing anything, Barnes went upstairs and found the tornado bearing down on the house.
"It wasn't like they say. They say it sounds like a freight train," Barnes said Wednesday as he collected his clothes and other belongings. "It was silent. A bunch of wind."
Ray Story tried to get his 70-year-old uncle, Bill Clark, to a hospital after the storms leveled his mobile home in Macon County, about 60 miles northeast of Nashville. Clark died as Story and his wife tried to navigate debris-strewn roads in their pickup truck, they said.
"He never had a chance," Story's wife, Nova, said. "I looked him right in the eye and he died right there in front of me."
President Bush said he called the governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee and assured them the administration was ready to help.
"Loss of life, loss of property -- prayers can help and so can the government," Bush said. "I do want the people in those states to know the American people are standing with them."
The system moved eastward to Alabama on Wednesday, bringing heavy rain and gusty wind, causing several injuries in counties northwest of Birmingham. The National Weather Service posted tornado watches for parts of southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and western Georgia, but the storms appeared to weaken as they approached the coast.
Northeast of Nashville, a spectacular fire erupted at a natural gas pumping station. The station took a direct hit from the storm, but no deaths connected to the fire were reported.
About 200 yards from the edge of the plant, Bonnie and Frank Brawner picked through the rubble of their home for photographs and other personal items. The storm sheared off the second story of the home.
"We had a beautiful neighborhood, now it's hell," said Bonnie Brawner, 80.
More than 20 students were stuck behind wreckage and jammed doors, mostly for short periods, in battered dormitories at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. Tornadoes had hit the campus in the past, and students knew the drill when they heard sirens, university President David S. Dockery said.
"When the sirens went off the entire process went into place quickly," Dockery said. Students "were ushered into rooms, into the bathrooms, interior spaces."
About 50 students were taken to a hospital and nine stayed through the night, but all would be fine, he said.
In Memphis, high wind collapsed the roof of a Sears store at a mall. Bricks, air conditioners and other debris were scattered in the parking lot, where about two dozen vehicles were damaged.
Winter tornadoes are not uncommon. The peak tornado season is late winter through midsummer, but the storms can happen at any time of the year with the right conditions.
But this batch was the nation's worst in a 24-hour period since May 3, 1999, when some 50 people died in Oklahoma and Kansas. The death toll ranks among the top 15 from tornado outbreaks since 1950, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at the center in Norman, Okla., just south of Oklahoma City.
The tornadoes could be due to La Nina, the cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean that can cause changes in weather patterns around the world. It is the opposite of the better-known El Nino, a periodic warming of the same region.
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200,000 Chinese (each as unique as the snowflakes stranding them) stuck in a train station.
Driving sleet, freezing temperatures and a blanket of snow across southern China have paralysed trains and aircraft, stranding tens of millions of people trying to get home for the biggest holiday in the Chinese calendar. Labels: China, disasters, Elf, weather
The worst weather in 50 years pummelled swaths of central, southern and eastern China as migrant workers and students, business travellers and officials assigned to provincial postings battled for tickets to join their families for the lunar new year holiday.
The human tide strains public transport every year even though the authorities pull dozens of extra trains into service and lay on additional flights to try to cope. With new year's day falling on February 7 this year, the bad weather has swept China just as the number of travellers is reaching its peak.
The China Meteorological Administration issued a red alert warning of more snowstorms and blizzards in central and eastern China, particularly around Shanghai, the country's commercial hub. It placed a notice on the central forecast website that said: Cut unnecessary outdoor activities.
Among the worst-hit cities is southern Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong. The province is one of China's most important manufacturing regions, with thousands of factories making everything from T-shirts to electronics staffed by millions of migrant workers from poorer inland provinces.
Hundreds of thousands of those workers, many with young children, found themselves stranded at the Guangzhou railway station after snowstorms snapped power lines to passenger trains from neighbouring Hunan province, an important hub for trains on the main line between Guangzhou and Beijing.
Officials struggled to control an estimated 200,000 travellers at the station a number expected to swell to 600,000 over the next couple of days. Temporary shelter was being arranged for the migrant workers in schools and conventions centres. Soldiers were deployed to stand guard around the station and police barked orders through bullhorns to try to maintain order.
Notice boards inside the station were a sea of red, showing that almost every train had been cancelled. Radio announcements urged people not to go to the station since most trains had been cancelled and tickets were no longer being sold until new year's day.
Liu Si, who hoped to travel back to the western metropolis of Chongqing, had been stuck at the station for days. The number 1059 train to Chongqing didn't go on the 26th, it didn't go on the 27th and there's no way it's going today on the 28th.
With officials warning that it could take until the end of the week to work through the backlog of passengers, Mr Liu was not optimistic of spending the festival with his family. I've been in Guangdong a decade. I've never spent a Chinese New Year here. This year I might have to. It just won't feel right.
The freakish weather has already affected 67 million people and economic losses so far have been placed at 18.2 billion yuan (£1.3 billion).
Chinese New Year sees the biggest human migration on earth, with an estimated 2.47 billion journeys over the holiday season this year almost double the entire population of 1.3 billion.
More than a dozen airports around the country were closed because of icy conditions, including one of China's busiest airports the Hongqiao hub for domestic flights serving Shanghai.
In a sign of official anxiety that the travel chaos could trigger social unrest, Premier Wen Jiabao ordered local officials to mobilise all possible resource to ensure people get home. He said: More heavy snow is expected. All government departments must prepare for this increasingly grim situation and urgently take action.
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Hurricane Dean about to score direct hit on Jamacia.
Jamaica opened shelters nationwide on Saturday and Cuba declared a ``state of alert'' as the Caribbean's warm waters fueled a strengthening Hurricane Dean, with forecasters predicting the storm could grow to a powerful Category 5. Labels: disasters, international news, weather
Now a Category 4 storm with sustained winds at 150 mph, Dean was expected to pass south of Hispaniola but dump as much as five inches of rain to the two countries on the island -- Haiti and the Dominican Republic -- which are both prone to devastating floods and mudslides.
As dark clouds rolled in from the south and a light rain began to fall, residents of the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, calmly ran errands at stores with fully stocked shelves, despite government advisories about heavy rains and possible flooding.
``Nothing's going to happen here -- a lot of water of nothing else,'' said Pedro Alvajar, 61, as he sat in a doorway selling lottery tickets.
Dean killed three people and devastated banana and sugar crops a day earlier as it crossed small eastern Caribbean islands. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said its winds could surpass 155 mph as it approaches the Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico on Monday.
By Thursday, there is a chance Dean could threaten the U.S., though it is expected to lose some strength as it travels over the Yucatan.
NASA shortened the last spacewalk for astronauts aboard the shuttle Endeavour and scaled back the mission, to allow the spacecraft to return to Earth on Tuesday -- a day early -- if the storm appeared to threaten the Houston home of Mission Control.
In Jamaica, which expected to take a direct hit Sunday, tourists including Shante Morgan of Moor Park, Calif., began lining up outside the Montego Bay airport before dawn to book flights out ahead of the storm.
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Two states are burning.
On this map, it's kind of hard to see any of Idaho. Montana isn't looking much better. So many acres are being burned in huge wildfires.
The worst part: The National Guard, who would normally be helping put out such blazes, are in Iraq serving their 4th deployments in a pointless continual war.
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Divers searched the Mississippi River for bodies still trapped beneath the twisted debris of a collapsed bridge Thursday, as finger-pointing began over a report two years ago that found the bridge was "structurally deficient."
The official death count from Wednesday evening's collapse stood at four, but Police Chief Tim Dolan said more bodies were in the water. Hospitals officials said 79 others were injured.
A strong current and low visibility hampered the search, and divers were pulled out of the water Thursday afternoon so the water could be lowered, said Inspector Jeff Storms of the sheriff's department. Twelve vehicles had been located in the river, officials said.
"We have a number of vehicles that are underneath big pieces of concrete, and we do know we have some people in those vehicles," Dolan said. "We know we do have more casualties at the scene."
As many as 30 people were reported missing, and the rescue effort had shifted to recovery.
The White House said an inspection of the 40-year-old bridge in 2005 found problems. The Interstate 35W span rated 50 on a scale of 100 for structural stability and was classified as "structurally deficient," transportation officials said.
The designation means some portions of the bridge needed to be scheduled for repair or replacement, and it was on a schedule for inspection every two years. "It didn't mean that the bridge is unsafe," Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said.
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Troubled bridge over water.
BREAKING NEWS
MINNEAPOLIS - The entire span of an interstate bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed during evening rush hour Wednesday, sending vehicles, tons of concrete and twisted metal crashing into the water.
The Interstate 35W bridge, which spans between Minneapolis and St. Paul, was under construction when it broke into several huge sections.
It was not clear how many people were injured. A burning truck and a school bus clung to one slanted slab, while at least eight cars and a truck were submerged in the river.
The bus had just crossed the bridge before it crumpled into pieces, and broadcast reports indicated the children on the bus exited out the back door.
Dozens of vehicles were scattered and stacked on top of each other amid the rubble. Some people were stranded on parts of the bridge that aren't completely in the water.
Local television stations captured video of injured people being carried up the riverbank. There was no official word on injuries, but dozens of rescue vehicles were there. Divers were also in the water.
Gregory Wernick Sr., Rockford, Ill., drove over the bridge shortly before the collapse. He stopped to get a drink nearby and heard commotion so he went back.
"I figure I crossed about 10 minutes before it happened," he said. "That's just too close to call."
He was standing about 200 feet away on top of a parking ramp with large group of people.
"I've never seen anything like this," he said.
(Ed note: This is undoubtedly going to be an important story with more information coming in all the time. Prayers and thoughts go to those dealing with this tragic situation.)
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