The collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge linking Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., Wednesday will have ramifications throughout the nation as state transportation departments are ordered to exert stepped-up scrutiny of their spans.

It will be a response familiar to Pennsylvania, which launched closer inspections of a number of its spans following the December 2005 collapse of a section of a bridge over Interstate 70 in Washington County.

Those beefed-up inspections resulted in the rebuilding of the Route 8 bridge spanning Route 422 in Butler's Bon Aire area last year, as well as the closing, razing and replacement of several other spans in Western Pennsylvania.

Like the other bridges impacted after the 2005 collapse, the Bon Aire span was of a similar type of construction to the one that gave way in Washington County, resulting in injuries to five people but, fortunately, resulting in no fatalities.

Unfortunately for Minnesota, its death toll from Wednesday's tragedy is significant; officials early on estimated that the final tally would be in the dozens.

It's too soon to determine what the full impact of the I-35W disaster in other states will be since it could be months before the cause of the tragedy is ascertained.

Mark Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the first step in the federal investigation of Wednesday's collapse will be to recover pieces of the span and reassemble them, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, to try to determine what happened.

For Minnesota, however, there will be immediate precautions. Gov. Tim Pawlenty ordered immediate inspections Thursday morning of all bridges that have a design like the one that collapsed Wednesday.

After 2005's I-70 bridge collapse, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation's inspection emphasis quickly centered on box-beam bridges. Allen Biehler, state secretary of transportation, told a Pittsburgh newspaper Wednesday evening that "only when we did a forensic analysis (of the I-70 span) did we understand that things were going on inside beams that we couldn't know from inspecting them from the outside."

Although Biehler said he felt comfortable that Pennsylvania has a safe transportation system, he acknowledged that the commonwealth must continue to address the state's current backlog of structurally deficient bridges — and that backlog is huge: 5,900 in a condition that merits the structurally deficient designation.

Investigators assigned to the Minnesota collapse were eager to review video of the tragedy, and officials were establishing a phone number for witnesses to call with information about what they saw.

One key to unraveling Wednesday's puzzle might be the construction workers who were on the bridge at the time that the span began to fall. Eighteen workers were placing concrete finish on the bridge for what was considered a routine resurfacing project.

The information some of those workers might be able to give to investigators could be an accurate description of the order in which sections of the span fell, which could help pinpoint the cause of the collapse more quickly.

That could give Minnesota authorities and other states' transportation agencies guidance on what they should be looking for when inspecting their bridges, especially those with construction characteristics similar to the I-35W bridge.

The cleanup task in Minnesota isn't going to be easy, and it will be dangerous. It also will be a source of sadness as officials acknowledge the devastation that the loss of life will have on families of the victims.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, in an editorial Thursday, made that point, while noting that the community would come together to show support.

The editorial also made another point that should prompt reflection:

"Some in the news business had been complaining lately about the lack of news. They spoke of the dog days. Wednesday we learned once more that everything can change in an instant. . . ."

That day in December 2005, like Wednesday, was pretty much a day like any other until the I-70 span, previously thought to be solid, fell.

People in Minnesota can feel confident that the engineering talent in this country is up to the task of determining what went wrong Wednesday. The findings will provide the knowledge that could help save other lives in other locales.