MINNEAPOLIS — On Wednesday evening, Jamecca Cohee was talking on her cell phone to her best friend, who had just picked up Cohee's mother at the airport.

Suddenly the friend said to Cohee, "I can hear some cracking." And then the phone went dead.

About the same time, Jeisy Aguiza, 13, and her brother Ronal, 7, and about 60 children were riding back to the Waite House Neighborhood Center after a day of swimming in Coon Rapids, Minn. when their bus "just fell," she said.

Aguiza closed her eyes and grabbed hold of her brother as the bus dropped through the air.

Seconds later, the bus landed on all four wheels on the broken bridge deck. Rocks rained through the windows, Aguiza said. Some of the kids got the emergency door opened, and they rushed out.

"We were all just screaming," she said. "We all ran away."

Brandon Andreen, 20, of Blaine, Minn. was driving down University Avenue when he saw a huge cloud of dust and smoke, and people running.

He parked his car and scrambled to the water. He saw dust, smoke and fire. Cars were crushed, sunken, floating and hanging from the bridge. A car exploded in front of him. Screams echoed down the river.

"It was the worst thing I've seen in my entire life," Andreen said. "You couldn't breathe, there was so much smoke."

Rescue workers were giving victims CPR, and two, he believed, died in front of him. He helped carry a woman who he believed had died out of a boat and up onto the shore.

Wayne Armstrong was working as a cashier at the BP gas station at the corner of University and 10th Avenues, when he heard a loud boom.

Smoke billowed into the gas station, and the lights went out. When Armstrong looked outside, he saw a maroon car roll forward and fall off the edge, its tail lights disappearing.

Michael Vechell, 25, of Minneapolis was in a car traveling south on the crowded freeway and exited on University when traffic backed up.

As he crossed the freeway at University, Vechell saw a big plume of smoke and people getting out of their cars, he said: "I noticed that the bridge wasn't there." Jeff Cowan jumped on his motorcycle and streaked down a service road to the river, crashing into what he thought were power lines before joining other volunteers in the water. He estimated there were 15 cars in the river, some floating, some with only their bumpers showing.

Cowan and Amanda Cairns, 30, helped pull one man out of a sinking vehicle and also helped bring rescue equipment from vehicles to the river. Concrete was falling from the bridge and a film of gasoline floated on the water as rescue workers pulled out the injured and the dead.

As crowds gathered on the riverbanks, the stench of burning chemicals filled the air.

Thousands gathered on the Stone Arch Bridge. Some took pictures with cell phones or cameras.

From across the Twin Cities and beyond, rescue workers, doctors, nurses and construction workers flooded into downtown. At 6:45 p.m., police yelled at the onlookers to get off the north section of the bridge where rescue workers below searched for survivors. They feared that section could also collapse.

Once inside the ring of pandemonium, the catastrophe became an orderly scene of grim determination and efficiency.

Ambulances queued up, police escorting them one by one down into the bridge area. There was little shouting, no chaos. A state command center quickly opened.

"It looked like a terrorist attack, a complete catastrophe," said Ryan Murphey, 30, of Minneapolis. "But everyone there was very calm and organized."

Water cannons shot streams at smoldering vehicles. The walking wounded, necks in braces, were guided off the bridge and out of the area.

Overhead, the sound of television helicopters and sirens cut through the hot breeze. To the west, an ominous sky dropped cloud-to-ground lightning and dime-size hail, threatening to make the already horrific rescue scene even more dangerous for workers.

By 10 p.m., the number of gawkers had dwindled to dozens. Police pushed the crowds far back, and the area was blocked off with tape.

Even as night fell, onlookers held up cellphone cameras shooting into the darkness.

Normally clogged with traffic and glaring headlights as cars jockey to turn left and head north onto I-35W at that time of night when the Minnesota Twins are home, the wide avenue was deserted for a six-block stretch, except for a series of pickup trucks and flatbed semis silently hauling portable lights to be used on the river overnight.

The river ran under a blood-red moon as midnight approached.

Staff writers Pam Louwagie, Randy Furst, Jon Tevlin, Dave Chanen, Chris Havens, Bill McAuliffe, Jerry Zgoda, Kevin Giles, Richard Meryhew and Kevin Duchschere contributed to this report.

Scripps Howard News Service

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