Here is a very interesting reader e-mail, there is a very good possibility that these events were dry runs and practice runs for the bridge event as we have seen happen so many times before with other disasters.
If anyone can find news articles or reports about this drowning or these exercises or pictures of the rescue teams looking for the drowning victim please send them in.
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Something which may be related and of interest.
Prior to the bridge collapse on Wed Aug 1st, a lesser local event was in the news.
It was reported that a man had presumably drowned Sunday morning July 29th, while falling off of an inner tube being towed by a boat on Lake Owasso in Shoreview, which is situated in
Ramsey county.
The Ramsey county Sheriffs office enlisted it's dive team as
well as those of two neighboring counties,Hennepin and Washington counties... (yep, same teams that were sent to the bridge collapse)to look for the drowning victims' body for which the reportedly searched for five days, allegedly finding the body on the morning of the fifth day.
It was quite an event and there were at least 30 different official vehicles, including a "Mobile Incident Command Center" and numerous para-military looking individuals.
Curious thing though, I live quite close to Lake Owasso and passed by the scene frequently over the course of those five days. Something struck me as being quite odd when there were no longer any boats, dive teams, Sheriffs squads or anyone
else for that matter searching after the third day.
I tried to find info on when they found the body, but it had not been discovered until the morning of the fifth day, which would have been quite a feat since there were no search crews active on the lake after the third day.
I swim this lake almost daily and can tell you that because of the drought conditions currently extant here, it is quite possible to literally walk across the lake, though the bottom is
rather soft, it is capable of supporting me (200lbs).
There would have been no need for the amount of personnel that were present.
Even more curious is the fact that roughly a year prior to this incident, that same lake was the scene of a multi-jurisdictional dive team training exercise, consisting of the teams from the same counties previously mentioned.
It may all just be a coincidence, but it sure made me sit up and take notice...
