U.S. & World

MINNEAPOLIS (CBS) ― An elite team of Navy divers joined the search Tuesday for victims of the collapse of a Minnesota bridge that killed at least five people, bringing greater experience and more sophisticated technology to the search for bodies in the murky Mississippi River.

The team of 15 divers and a five-member command crew arrived hours before dawn Tuesday, and several divers immediately entered the water even though local officials encouraged them to wait until daybreak.

"Two in the morning, they dove into the water," Minneapolis Police Capt. Mike Martin said, calling them "the best divers in the world."

Navy Senior Chief David Nagle said the divers wanted to get a feel for the area, and were in the water for about two hours. Divers were back in the river by late morning, removing concrete rebar and other debris. Local crews have complained they have been hampered by dangerously unstable wreckage and a rapid current.

Meantime, WCCO-TV in Minneapolis reports that in the week since the bridge collapse, there is still no firm theories on what caused the disaster. Nearly two dozen federal experts are in Minneapolis trying to unravel the events leading up to the collapse.

Authorities recovered and transported a car from the waters of the Mississippi River near the I-35W Bridge Tuesday morning, reports CBS station WCCO-TV in Minneapolis., but there were no bodies inside.

Hennepin County Sheriff's Capt. Bill Chandler said the vehicle was removed to make room for the Navy dive operation.

The team's arrival raised hopes of speeding up the recovery operation. At least eight people are missing and presumed dead in last week's collapse, with perhaps more still in the river. Five people are confirmed dead.

Joining the Navy team was an FBI dive crew, doing forensic work for the investigation. Their tools included a small unmanned submarine equipped with a robotic arm. "It's basically crime-lab-underwater kind of work," Martin said.

The Navy divers will be tethered to above-ground oxygen tanks, so they can stay in the water much longer than local divers, who had been using scuba tanks. Heavy-duty equipment will allow divers to cut through steel wreckage. The Navy also has sophisticated sonar to scan for bodies.

Also Tuesday, four people still hospitalized with injuries from the collapse improved to serious condition, leaving only one person in critical condition. About 100 people were hurt in the disaster.

The city asked residents to observe a moment of silence Tuesday evening at the minute the bridge fell, and bells at churches and City Hall were to toll immediately after.

Separately, teams of designers and builders are racing to meet a dawn Wednesday deadline to show they are qualified to bid on a fast-track bridge replacement project.

A new report released Tuesday by the Minnesota Department of Transportation showed inspections done in the mid-1970s on the Interstate 35W bridge that spanned the Mississippi River noted cracking in supports.

State transportation officials hope to award contracts next month, with the goal of having a new bridge standing at the end of 2008.

Erecting such a bridge would ordinarily take about three years, even if the design and building phases were overlapped to save time, said Bill Cox, owner of Corman Construction Inc. in Annapolis Junction, Maryland, a road and bridge construction firm.

Navy divers assisted in the reclamation of historic sunken ships including the ironclad Civil War ship the Monitor. After the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, New York, they made more than 700 dives to recover bodies and reclaim wreckage to help the government investigation. Navy divers recovered both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

The city asked residents to observe a moment of silence Tuesday evening at the minute the bridge fell, and bells at churches and City Hall were to toll immediately after.

Teams of designers and builders are racing to meet a dawn Wednesday deadline for showing they are qualified to bid on the bridge replacement project, which the state has put on a fast track.

State transportation officials hope to award contracts next month, with the goal of having a new bridge standing at the end of 2008.

A severe winter in a state known for its cold weather could throw off the reconstruction schedule. But other conditions are favorable — including a construction industry with plenty of available resources to take on such a daunting challenge.

"It is doable. It is a bit fast, but this is an emergency," said Khaled Mahmoud with the Bridge Engineering Association in New York. "And if we are ever good at anything, it's responding to emergencies."

The goal of awarding contracts in mid-September is highly ambitious given the array of questions to be answered, including whether to mimic the former bridge's alignment, how much traffic to accommodate, how much to spend and what it will look like.

The state intends to write financial incentives into the contract to make the compressed schedule more likely to be met.

The bridge's design will largely determine the cost, and although the federal government has pledged $250 million, Mahmoud said $300 million to $350 million "sounds about right."

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)