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Bridge Efforts Shift from Rescue to Recovery

Vehicles rest on a collapsed section of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. The eight-lane, steel and concrete bridge broke apart Wednesday, sending at least 50 vehicles into the Mississippi River.
Scott Olson / Getty Images
Vehicles rest on a collapsed section of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. The eight-lane, steel and concrete bridge broke apart Wednesday, sending at least 50 vehicles into the Mississippi River.

After the collapse of the I-35 West bridge Wednesday, authorities are now focused on accounting for missing people and recovering the bodies of victims. They are treating the site as a crime scene, hoping to preserve as much evidence as possible to determine the cause of the collapse.

The destruction of this key highway left commuter traffic snarled Thursday morning in the Minneapolis area, and police are on the streets redirecting traffic to other bridges.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. utm

Jason Beaubien is a Peabody award-winning journalist. He's filed stories from more than 60 countries around the world. His reporting tends to focus on issues in lower-income countries. Often his reports highlight inequities, injustices and abuses of power. He also regularly writes about natural disasters, wars and human conflict. Over the last two decades he's covered hurricanes in the Caribbean, typhoons in the Philippines, multiple earthquakes in Haiti, the Arab Spring, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the drug war in Mexico.

Beaubien served as NPR's bureau chief in Johannesburg and later in Mexico City. In the early days of the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014 he reported from Sierra Leone. As COVID emerged in 2020 he reported on the start of the pandemic from Hong Kong. His reporting on the Taliban's attempts to derail the multi-billion dollar global effort to eradicate polio won an Edward R Murrow award.

He joined NPR in 2002 after volunteering to cover a coup attempt in the Ivory Coast. Previously Beaubien worked at WBUR in Boston and KQED in San Francisco. He lives in Maryland with his family and a rotating cast of goats, chickens, dogs and other animals.

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