By Sarah Light, staff writer

MINNEAPOLIS &8212; Walking down the street Thursday just a few blocks away from where the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed the day before, Albert Lea native Megan Menning stopped and gasped as she looked out over the wreckage scene she had almost been a part of.

It was her first time back since the incident happened almost 24 hours before.

&8220;I&8217;m still really in shock,&8221; said Menning, who now lives in St. Paul. &8220;I don&8217;t understand how that could even happen. I&8217;m sure I&8217;ve been over it hundreds of times, and I&8217;ve never thought twice about it.&8221;

The 25-year-old had begun her Wednesday just like any other day. She worked at her marketing job in Edina until about 5:15 p.m., then she called her friend, Scott, to see if he wanted to go to the Twins&8217; baseball game that evening.

She went home, took a shower and arrived at her friend&8217;s house around 5:40 p.m. to pick him up.

She said he wasn&8217;t quite ready to go, so he spent a few minutes getting some things together. Then they took off for the game.

The pair headed south on I-35W and were about 30 seconds away from the bridge when, Menning said, they could feel the ground shaking and they saw a huge cloud of dust ahead of them.

&8220;I said to my friend, Scott, &8216;Was that a bomb?&8217;&8221; Menning said. The road shifted right before their eyes.

Traffic had been slow &8212; as usual &8212; on that stretch of road, and it was nearly bumper to bumper as they approached the bridge, she said.

Now there were just a handful of cars in front of them before the area where the road had buckled and fell into the river on the north side.

She said people started getting out of their cars, and a woman ahead of them began shouting, &8220;The bridge collapsed! The bridge collapsed!&8221;

Menning said she assumed the woman was talking about an overpass bridge, but she was wrong. The I-35W bridge completely collapsed into the Mississippi River.

Coming northbound across the bridge on the other side of the road, another woman pulled over.

That woman, clearly very shaken, recited her story to Menning, &8220;&8216;It felt like an earthquake. I could feel my car bottoming out, so I gunned it. I was the last car to make it across. I could see cars falling backward into the water in my rearview mirror.&8217;&8221;

Eventually, Menning said, she and the other cars turned around and drove backward on the freeway to exit.

On their way back, they got a clear view of what had happened before any news crews or rescue teams had arrived.

What she saw, she said, is a picture she will never forget.

She said she witnessed people walking around on the different sections of the fallen bridge and could see people trying to help others.

&8220;I&8217;m still really shaken up from the incident,&8221; Menning said. &8220;I was 30 seconds away from driving onto the bridge.&8221;

Way across the bridge, south of the Mississippi River, Albert Lea native Brooke Rafdal was sitting in her Seven Corners apartment as the events unfolded just a few blocks away.

Rafdal said she had arrived home at about 5:30 p.m. and was sitting on her couch watching television when she felt a rumble.

Having once lived in California, the first thing she thought of was an earthquake, she said. The rumble sounded for 20 or 30 seconds.

Rafdal, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, said she didn&8217;t think anything of it at first until she got a call from her cousin who asked if she was OK. Her cousin told her the I-35W bridge had collapsed.

She walked out of her apartment and could see smoke and dust rising from the bridge, she said.

&8220;People were just running around,&8221; she said. &8220;It looked like something out of a movie. It was really surreal.&8221;

For the rest of the evening, she said, it was &8220;utter chaos.&8221; Emergency vehicles filled the streets surrounding her apartment, and all the roads around it were blocked off.

&8220;I never would have imagined that the bridge collapsed,&8221; Rafdal said. &8220;We go over it every day, multiple times a day.&8221;

As these two women begin to recover from the events they have seen, they said their thoughts are with the families of the people who lost their lives that day.

&8220;I know there&8217;s going to be a lot more victims in the next few days,&8221; Menning said. &8220;I&8217;m just honestly very happy to be alive. It was such a close call. It was much more traumatic than I expected.&8221;

Menning is the daughter of Tom and Jean Menning.

Rafdal is the daughter of Steve and Marha Rafdal.