By SHARON COHEN and BRIAN BAKST

MINNEAPOLIS - Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was “structurally deficient,” yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections.

“We thought we had done all we could,” state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan told reporters not far from the mangled remains of the span. “Obviously something went terribly wrong.”

Questions about the cause of the collapse and whether it could have been prevented arose Thursday as authorities shifted from rescue efforts to a grim recovery, searching for bodies that may be hidden beneath the river’s swirling currents.

The official death count from Wednesday’s rush-hour collapse stood at four, with another 79 injuries. But police said the death count would surely grow because bodies had been spotted in the water and as many as 30 people were still reported missing.

In 1990, the federal government gave the I-35W bridge a rating of “structurally deficient,” citing significant corrosion in its bearings. That made it one of 77,000 bridges in that category nationwide, 1,160 in Minnesota alone.

The designation means some portions of the bridge needed to be scheduled for repair or replacement, and it was on a schedule for inspection every two years.

During the 1990s, later inspections found fatigue cracks and corrosion in the steel around the bridge’s joints. Those problems were repaired. Starting in 1993, the state said, the bridge was inspected annually instead of every other year.

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