This was just emailed to me via family aquaintance of the bike rider fellow.

There is some irony here--that it's a bike commuter saving people from crumbling car commuting infrastructure. . .
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My teammate Dan was right under the bridge on his bike as it started to collapse. See his report below. Also, here are pics of him helping people. He is in the yellow helmet. http://flickr.com/photos/s4xton/sets/72157601157770382/show/

Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 13:13:12 -0500
Subject: [GW] Ride (and near death) Report

I can safely say that last night's bike commute home from work was a
disaster. I took my usual rouote 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 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 in it." Another woman had high heels on and she
and was slipping badly until I held onto 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 the 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.

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