By MONICA DAVEY and MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 8 - Investigators have found what may be a design flaw in the bridge that collapsed here a week ago, in the steel parts that connect girders, raising safety concerns for other bridges around the country, federal officials said on Wednesday.

Work continued on Wednesday in removing wreckage from the collapsed Minneapolis bridge.

The Federal Highway Administration swiftly responded by urging all states to take extra care with how much weight they place on bridges of any design when sending construction crews to work on them. Crews were doing work on the deck of the Interstate 35W bridge here when it gave way, hurling rush-hour traffic into the Mississippi River and killing at least five people.

The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation is months from completion, and officials in Washington said they were still working to confirm the design flaw in the so-called gusset plates and what, if any, role they had in the collapse.

Still, in making public their suspicion about a flaw, the investigators were signaling they considered it a potentially crucial discovery and also a safety concern for other bridges. Gusset plates are used in the construction of many bridges, not just those with a similar design to the one here.

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