Last night I had dinner with Noah Kunin and his girlfriend Britt Bakken as they were being interviewed by Wall Street Journal writer Doug Belkin at The Times Bar and Cafe.
As Noah and Britt lived closest to the 35W bridge that collapsed, they had some incredible first-hand experience with the event. Noah was actually in the shower when it occurred and went out on his roof to see what happened. With the rush to go out and help people he put on the first set of clothes he could find: a tight biker shirt, shorts and boots.
“There wasn’t any screaming,” Britt said. After it fell, Noah added that all they heard was tires exploding and noises from vehicles.
Britt described the people where they were on the south end of the bridge and how there was “no chaos” and “everyone knew what to do.” They described a man that came out of the water from nowhere and then immediately started to help others. They saw a biker on West River Parkway that came up to the bridge immediately after it collapsed where he literally threw down his expensive bike so he could jump up and give assistance.
They saw another man who’s car was submerged that went back to it, smashed open the passenger side window, and dug around because he “forgot some stuff, like his wallet,” even though the water was black and swirling with gas and oil.
They didn’t see anyone who was dead or severely injured. They assumed there had to have been people that died but didn’t see any evidence of it. People on various parts of the rubble were yelling messages to each other such as “are you okay?” and “do you see anyone?”
After they couldn’t find anyone else to help, Noah took photos of the scene and then gave me his username and password to his blog so I could update it on his behalf. He was bombarded with phone calls while he was being evacuated away from his home. As a result I ended up being his media agent throughout the next day, constantly getting calls and emails asking to get interview time with him and discussing the terms to use his photography. Good thing my work day was otherwise slow.
We had tapas and drank for a few hours. After Noah and Britt were finished retelling their stories, we moved on to talk more about some of the good and bad parts of the media reaction, how various news outlets are more organized than others, citizen journalism, the local blogosphere and our communication infrastructure.
I will update this post if this interview shows up in a piece at the Wall Street Journal.
While Noah as taken about twenty interviews so far, I recommend checking out Jon Gordon’s piece on this from a citizen-media angle (MP3) that also features my pals Erica and Chuck. Noah and Chuck are also in Julio Ojeda-Zapata’s citizen-media piece in the Pioneer Press today.
