Bridge tragedy ‘like a scene from a war zone’

AN IRISH student helping rescuers at the bridge which claimed several lives when it buckled and slid into the Mississippi in Minneapolis described the scene yesterday as “like a war zone.”

UCD student, Peter Friel, 21, from Rathmullen, Co Donegal, was working at his summer job in a garage 400 yards away when the tragedy happened.

“There was pandemonium,’’ he said, adding: “It was just after rush hour and a baseball game was about to start, so there was a lot of traffic using the bridge at the time.