Carola Bridge – now the German army is moving in with recovery tanks

2.31 p.m.: Dresden’s mayor Dirk Hilbert expressed relief that no one was injured when part of the Carola Bridge collapsed. “We can only be grateful that no one was harmed in this terrible event,” said the FDP politician.

With regard to the debris in the Elbe and possible flooding in the next few days, Hilbert said that securing the site of the accident was now the top priority. It must be ensured that there is no danger to people or buildings. At the same time, the search for the cause is ongoing. In addition, consideration must be given to what will happen next with the Carola Bridge.

13.12: Bridge construction expert Steffen Marx has commented on the collapse of part of Dresden’s Carola Bridge. “It is a disaster, especially because no one predicted it,” said Marx, who is a professor at the Institute for Concrete Structures at the TU Dresden, on site. “The structure is now in complete danger of collapsing.”

As one of the first large prestressed concrete bridges in the GDR, the Carola Bridge has all the shortcomings that such a structure from the early days of prestressed concrete bridges has. A “particularly tragic shortcoming” is that bridges do not have structural safety systems, so-called redundancies. “If anything happens, it will collapse,” explained Marx. An initial assumption is that corrosion played a significant role in the collapse.

It will be quite a while before it will be safe to ask questions under the bridge. Work is currently focused on making it safe for traffic. “That means we will try to secure the remaining part of the bridge, which has clearly suffered severe damage, by putting up temporary supports.”

Then they want to try to get the remaining part out of the river opening as quickly as possible in order to restore the flow cross-section for the Elbe, especially with a view to a possible impending flood, “and not to cause the next catastrophe with this catastrophe”.

10.44 am: Due to the partial collapse of the Carola Bridge over the Elbe, no shipping is possible in this part of the river. “Anyone who doesn’t have to go through there can go,” said a spokesman for the Dresden Water and Shipping Authority. The White Fleet canceled all of its scheduled trips for Wednesday. “We are trying to carry out planned charter trips and divert them to other ships,” said a spokesman for the company.

However, three historic steamers can travel up the Elbe towards Saxon Switzerland. The “Wehlen”, “Krippen” and “Diesbar” are located above the bridge on the quay. Two other steamers are already underway in Saxon Switzerland. When the ships are deployed on the terrace bank of the Elbe downstream of the bridge, the question is whether they can turn due to the water level. Everything else is still to be decided.

10.11 am: The collapse of the Carola Bridge could have been caused by corrosion. “We had massive chloride ingress here during the GDR era,” said Holger Kalbe. At the point where the bridge section collapsed during the night, there was a mast belonging to the public transport company, said the head of the bridge and civil engineering department of the city of Dresden. It is conceivable “that massive chlorides penetrated at that point and led to corrosion of the reinforcement inside the bridge.” The Carola Bridge is a prestressed concrete bridge consisting of three spans.

09.33 am: In a press conference this morning, eerie details of the bridge collapse were announced. The last tram apparently crossed the Carola Bridge a maximum of eleven minutes before the structure collapsed. According to DVB, the tram crossed the bridge at 2:50 a.m. The emergency call to the police was received at 3:01 a.m., a police spokesman told t-online. Seismographic measurements indicate that the bridge collapsed as early as 2:58 a.m.

The Dresden police received images in the morning that contained characters that could indicate a terrorist background. This was said by a police spokesman. The announcement of the information is intended to prevent such rumors from spreading. The police spokesman currently rules out a terrorist background: “If we receive the report on September 11th that Dresden’s largest bridge has collapsed – then of course the alarm bells will ring for us.” At the moment, however, there are no investigations and no clues. The police assume that it was an accident.

Meanwhile, the old town side of the Elbe has been reconnected to the district heating network. This is just beginning on the Neustadt side, according to a spokeswoman for Sachsen Energie.

09.05 am: Numerous people made their way to the Carola Bridge in the morning. Many took photos of the collapsed bridge. One passerby said he got on his bike straight after getting up to take a look for himself: “Now that you can see it for yourself, it feels really, really strange. Just yesterday I rode over the bridge two or three times,” the man told a t-online reporter.

Two tourists from Aschaffenburg said they had a “queasy feeling” when crossing every bridge in Dresden. “Because after tonight we know: If you’re unlucky, it can be all over.”

A man from the Dresden area brings another aspect into play. “This is a catastrophe for Dresden, especially in view of the flooding that threatens us in the coming days,” he said.

08.29 am: According to the city administration, the Carola Bridge in Dresden was completed in 1971. There are three bridges that connect both banks of the Elbe. The bridge leads from Carolaplatz to Rathenauplatz. Hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians cross the Elbe every day on this bridge – especially many people use it when pop star Roland Kaiser comes to town for his “Kaisermania” concerts. The stage for the spectacle is on the banks of the Elbe between the Carola Bridge and the Augustus Bridge.

In recent years, the Carola Bridge has been renovated in two steps. One of the tasks was to repair damage to the prestressed concrete structure, as the city of Dresden writes on its website. The third and final step should follow next year. According to the “Sächsische Zeitung”, the collapsed part of the bridge is the section that has not yet been renovated.

A traffic trial was launched on the Carola Bridge at the beginning of September. According to the city, the traffic routing towards the city center was to be changed by the end of the year in order to gain insights into greater safety and to improve the route for pedestrians and cyclists.

08.03 am: A drone belonging to the Workers’ Samaritan Federation was deployed early on Wednesday morning at the Carola Bridge to take pictures of the damage to the structure. The Dresden fire department told t-online. The Road and Civil Engineering Office and the Technical Relief Agency will analyze the images and then discuss how to proceed.

07.35 am: The fire department is currently assuming that the heavily damaged Carola Bridge in Dresden is in acute danger of collapsing. “We expect that further parts of the bridge could collapse,” said a fire department spokesman on site on Wednesday morning. He called on people to stay away from the bridge if possible.

“There is a danger to life” on and around the bridge, it was said. Part of the bridge collapsed in the early hours of the morning, but no one was injured.

07.29 am: The Dresden fire department has published photos with details of the damage to the Carola Bridge. The tram tracks, which were bent by the collapse of the bridge, can be clearly seen.

07.09 am: After the collapse of the Carola Bridge, experts from the city administration and all parties involved are discussing how to proceed. The city of Dresden announced this early this morning.

6.44 am: A fire department spokesman told Radio Dresden this morning that the emergency services had been alerted to the scene of the accident at around 3:08 a.m. There was a gap of around one meter in size at the bridgehead of the Carola Bridge. Shortly afterwards there was a “loud bang”; the water from the burst district heating pipes flowed onto the terrace bank.

The spokesman said that they were “impressed” by what had happened. The closures around the bridge were because the Carola Bridge was in acute danger of collapsing after the incident during the night.

6.05 am: The Dresden public transport company said that there was no tram on the bridge during the night. This meant that no passengers or vehicles were injured – lines 3 and 7 cross the bridge every hour at night on weekends.

According to the Dresden transport company DVB, tram lines 3, 7 and 8 will be diverted on Wednesday morning due to the accident. The Dresden fire department published photos of the considerable damage on its Facebook page this morning.

5.50 am: After the partial collapse of the Carola Bridge on Wednesday night, emergency services have completely closed the Carola Bridge, the Elbe, the Elbe Cycle Path and the Terrassenufer to traffic, according to Radio Dresden. The Carola Bridge is one of the four Elbe bridges in Dresden’s city center, bordering Rathenauplatz to the south and Carolaplatz to the north.