‘You feel like everything is out to get you’
Amy Lindholm, a medical assistant, was in a vehicle on the bridge when it collapsed. She walked around the broken concrete, comforting the injured and pouring bottled water on people’s cuts. But Lindholm’s back now aches, and she suffered her own psychological injury. She no longer tries to fall asleep in silence in her bed because the images and sounds of the disaster come rushing back. Now she sleeps on the couch with the television on. The couch’s firmness is good for her back. “And I’m closer to the door in case something happens,” she says. “Like [if] my apartment goes down or something.”
‘I pretty much think about it all the time’
Kimberly Brown was riding with her friend to a soccer game when their car fell along with the bridge. Afterward, on her first day back at work, she parked in a parking garage as always and started walking toward her office. But when a car passed, the concrete floor fluttered slightly. It stopped her in her tracks, hand over thumping heart. Now Brown questions the stability of everything. She says she suffers from back and neck pain, and finds herself impatient with grousing by people around her. When a co-worker complained that nobody was refilling the office coffee pot, she says she stopped herself from snapping: How about I drop you off a bridge and see how much you care about your coffee pot?
‘It’s sort of like survivor remorse’
Brent and Chris Olson were on their way to a Twins game to celebrate their 38th anniversary when the bridge fell. Besides headaches, they have no physical injuries. The only repair to their car, a 1997 Jaguar, was a new windshield, because they couldn’t scrape off all the bright orange paint that investigators sprayed on the glass. Now it’s hard for them to reconcile their good luck. “People lost their lives. … We walked off the thing,” Brent Olson said. His wife added: “We don’t know why. We don’t know why at all.”
‘It’s not something you’re just going to move past’
Construction worker Jeff Ringate was getting ready to pour concrete on the bridge when it tumbled beneath him. He can still hear screams of people trapped under debris. He’s working again — on light duty because of back and neck injuries. One assignment, he said, was working on a crumbling bridge near Stillwater, Minn. “The first day I pulled up there I wanted to get in my car and leave,” he said. “Like, you’ve got to be kidding me.” He’s hoping to switch to a job that doesn’t involve bridges.
