VIDEO: When James Clack learned that Baltimore's Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed Tuesday, memories of a similar disaster from earlier in his career came flooding in.
Clack retired from his role as the Ankeny Fire Department Chief in 2023, but before he came to Iowa, Clack spent over two decades as a fire chief in Minneapolis.
On Aug. 1, 2007, he and his wife had dinner reservations to celebrate their wedding anniversary, but those plans were interrupted. Just after 6 p.m., Clack was dispatched to respond after the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River.
“Most firefighters don't plan on a bridge collapse. We do think about structure collapse all the time, technical rescue, but not a bridge collapse," he told Local 5.
Since that day, Clack has thought about that bridge collapse, in which 13 people died and over 100 were injured, quite often.