MINNEAPOLIS -- The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office said human remains were recovered from the site of the Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minneapolis Sunday afternoon.

After searching for most of the day, divers pulled the body out around 2:30 p.m. Sunday. It's the first discovery of remains since Friday after storms derailed most of their efforts Saturday.

The discovery puts the death toll for the Aug. 1 collapse at nine. Authorities have a list of five people that are known to be missing. But the body was not immediately identified.

Funeral Held For Woman, Daughter Found Friday

Saturday, Family and friends attended a double funeral for a St. Paul mother and daughter killed in the Minneapolis bridge collapse.

The bodies of 23-year-old Sadiya Sahal and her 22-month-old daughter Hanah were recovered by Navy divers more than a week after the Aug. 1 I-35W bridge collapse.

The Sahals were buried Saturday afternoon. Ahmed Sahal -- Sadiya's father -- issued a statement saying the burial brought closure to a long and difficult ordeal. He also said the family is deeply grateful to divers and others who helped in the search for the bodies.

Sadiya Sahal was five months pregnant. The nursing student had moved to the Twin Cities from Somalia in 2000.

Money Coming Soon

Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced that $50 million in relief aid will immediately go to the state of Minnesota in the wake of the bridge collapse.

Peters, in an announcement near the fallen bridge on Friday, said the funds will go to Minnesota's Department of Transportation for cleanup, rerouting traffic and designing the new bridge.

Peters said the money is an advance of the $250 million that was appropriated earlier this week to pay for a new bridge. Officials are hopeful that the new bridge can be completed by the end of 2008.

No Wobbling Felt, Official Says

A road crew supervisor who survived the bridge collapse insists none of his workers felt any unusual wobbling or swaying before the span plunged into the Mississippi River.

"During all of my time on the I-35W bridge, I did not notice any unusual or unexpected swaying or rumbling," said Steve Weston, a project manager with Progressive Contractors of St. Michael, Minn. "No one in my crew made any such report to me. Right up to the collapse, I had no reason to believe that my crew and I were in danger."

The firm also stated it has completed its own "intensive review" of the work.

"There’s nothing we did during our work that should have contributed to the collapse," Weston said. "We’re as shaken and baffled by the collapse as the motorists on the bridge that day."

Weston was part of an 18-member crew on the bridge when it crumbled Aug. 1. He said he was lucky to survive. One worker, Greg "Jolly" Jolstad, 45, is one of eight people who remain missing.

The firm's work has become one focus on the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the collapse. Peters warned states Wednesday to take precautions about added stress placed on bridges during repair work.

Progressive Contractors was resurfacing the bridge deck as part of a $9 million state contract. The project was about 70 percent complete, said Liz Benjamin, a state construction engineer overseeing the work. The job mainly entailed grinding off the top 2 inches of the road’s surface and repaving with new concrete.

Crews also replaced a series of expansion joints, which are narrow breaks between slabs that allow concrete to expand and contract with the weather.

In addition, workers searched for areas where the concrete was eroded below the surface. When they found such spots, they used jackhammers to remove all 9 inches of the concrete deck.

By July 31, the contractor had completed work on two lanes in each direction and had begun working on two of the four remaining lanes. On Aug. 1, the day of the collapse, crews spent much of their time using 45-pound jackhammers to remove concrete from various weak spots, Benjamin said.

Plans for that evening had called for workers to begin resurfacing two lanes. They had heavy equipment and roughly 100 tons of sand and other material used to make the concrete staged on the bridge.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported this week that road crew workers told a rescuer shortly after the collapse they had felt "wobbling" on the bridge. Progressive Contractors officials said none of the surviving crew members stated they had noticed such unusual movement.

Weston said many drivers "may not realize that every steel bridge sways to some extent."

Progressive Contractors, founded in 1971, has done extensive work for the Minnesota Department of Transportation and other public agencies.

"We continue to believe that our concrete repair work was routine, that it was done well, and that there was nothing about it that should have caused a bridge to collapse," said Tom Sloan, a Progressive Contractors vice president.

Bridge Arrests

Police call Joseph Harris Jones and his buddies trespassing hucksters trying to make a buck from the bridge collapse.

They arrested Jones and cited four others Wednesday night after catching the men inside a security perimeter. Jones has been trying to hawk a $650,000 piece of sonar equipment to aid the search for bodies, Minneapolis police Capt. Mike Martin said.

"We've had problems with people coming here trying to make money off this tragedy," Martin said. "It's pitiful that someone would do that."

But an attorney for the men said no one was trying to sell anything. Attorney Marsh Halberg said Jones and the others have stellar credentials and are in Minneapolis trying to aid the recovery mission and collapse investigation.

Two of those cited –- John Kloske and Steven Untiedt -- are sonar experts who have provided underwater security for a Super Bowl and Republican National Convention. Kloske and Untiedt are with SRI International, a private research firm with an office at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"They're here for humanitarian purposes," Halberg said. "They were not trying to hawk anything. They were coming to help on their own nickel."

Halberg said the arrest and citations stem from a communication breakdown among the alphabet soup of agencies working the disaster site.

Jones, 46, is a retired Coast Guard captain. He was in Minneapolis on behalf of CodaOctopus, a New York-based firm specializing in underwater mapping and inspections, Halberg said. Jones, of Gales Ferry, Conn., remains jailed in Hennepin County on suspicion of trespassing, interference with a death scene and obstruction of legal process.

CodaOctopus, which is working with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop underwater inspection equipment for the U.S. Coast Guard, offered its services to the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, said Angus Lugsdin, a CodaOctopus vice president. Sheriff Rich Stanek invited the firm to send its sonar equipment to the scene, Lugsdin said. Jones and the others arrived to help pave the way for the equipment's arrival, Lugsdin said.

Martin detailed the case for reporters Thursday. Martin said Jones arrived uninvited one day at the bridge site, managed to talk his way into a secure police command post and offered to sell sonar equipment. The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, which is leading the search for trapped victims, told him to go away, Martin said.

Martin said Jones and his colleagues returned Wednesday night and unlawfully penetrated the security perimeter. They had cameras and video recording equipment, Martin said.

Halberg said the only cameras the men carried were on their cell phones. He said the group had signed a log, were wearing temporary security passes and had been escorted into the area by a police officer.

One of those cited was Joseph C. Peters, of Lake Winola, Pa., president of MSGI Security Solutions. Peters is a former assistant deputy director in President George W. Bush's drug police office and served in an anti-drug program during the Clinton Administration. He also is a former state prosecutor in Pennsylvania.

Martin said the case was one of two instances of profiteering at the recovery site. Police detained a second man Thursday morning they said has been trying to sell his expertise in construction rigging and demolition. The man, whose name has not been released, has been appearing as an expert on network shows, Martin said.

Before his arrest, the supposed expert was pressing officials to hire him. "We don’t know what his problem is," Martin said. "We just know he's our problem."

Martin warned would-be profiteers to stay away from the collapse site.

"If you come here to try to sell your product and services and capitalize on the people here, I'll make sure within every means possible you won’t have the credibility to sell Girl Scout cookies," Martin said.

Martin called dealing with unwanted solicitors "a huge distraction."

"The most important thing we're trying to do now is recover the victims," he said. "When we have to focus on this stuff it detracts from our ability to do our work."

Police have established a wide perimeter around the collapse site on both sides of the Mississippi River and up and down the river for a considerable distance, marking the protected area with officers, cameras, motion detectors, fences and yellow police tape.

Before the latest two arrests, authorities had arrested 16 people on trespassing charges after they were caught breaching the perimeter.