SHOREVIEW — Don Barnard, 77, is the only survivor left from the Shoreview TV tower collapse that left seven workers dead on Sept. 7, 1971, 45 years ago.
His brother did not fall from the tower tied off to a piece of steel and was not cut in two. “That is not so,” he said. The workers were not tied to the structure while working, Barnard said. He did see his brother fall, but he was not cut in two.
“That was welded in Columbus, Ohio and sent to us in boxcars,” he said. “The welds were no good. It pulled apart.”
Barnard keeps photos of the broken welds on the collapsed tower — they are a reminder to him that he thinks the collapse of the tower was not the fault of the workers or the company he worked for, National Steel Erectors out of Oklahoma.
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