I Was On The 35W Bridge Hours Before It Collapsed 10 Years Ago

I'll never forget that day. It was summer vacation and I was in high school. I was on a mini vacation with my grandma, aunt and cousin. We spent the afternoon looking at animals at the Como Zoo. My family and I didn't get to the "cities" very often, so we were a little out of our element so to speak. We got lost on the way back to our hotel.

We ended up taking the 35W bridge just hours before it became the site of a horrific tragedy that had the attention of the nation. For us, that was a big deal because I could count on two hands how many times I'd been to the Twin Cities at that point. My aunt didn't have a smart phone, we didn't have GPS, we didn't have text messaging at the time. There was no way for us to know exactly what had just happened.

We got back to the hotel and went to grab dinner. My aunt left her cell phone in the hotel room. When we came back from dinner we had tons of missed calls from my parents and other family members asking us if we were OK and if we'd heard the news. When my parents told us the bridge collapsed, we didn't believe them at first because we were JUST on it. We turned on the news and were all extremely horrified to hear what had happened and even more freaked out that we had traveled on that same bridge that day. It was a very surreal feeling.

We were lucky enough to live to tell our tale when many were not so lucky. Thirteen people lost their lives that day and many others were injured. Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news?