Yesterday as my wife and I watched a parade of gray frigates rotate slowly around Seattle harbor, my son called from over a thousand miles away.
“Did you hear the news?”
“No, what news?”
“The I35 bridge collapsed”
“Which one?”
“The one by the U.”
“So where are you?”
“Right next to it, on the 10th Avenue bridge.”
Before leaving on vacation, I struck a bargain with the kids, in exchange for the car keys they would feed the cat and water the plants. This worked well for my son; he could use my car to move to a new apartment in Dinkytown, blocks from the bridge. He was caught in the traffic jam.
“Have you heard from your sister?”
“No, but she went to work at 3:00. Gotta make some calls. Talk to you later. Love”
We checked the list of family friends and acquaintances whose pattern of life may have taken them within reach of this tragedy and tried to connect to them, but tens of thousands of others in Minneapolis were following the same impulse and the circuits were jammed..
Just like everyone else, we live our lives connected to the ones we love mostly by confidence that they are well because life is safe and comfortable. It is the supreme luxury of our place and time. It is the very thing that 9/11 was designed to destroy.
My wife and I found ourselves in a brew pub watching CNN, stunned by the endless repetition of inaccuracies.
The faces on the news were familiar. We both once worked for the City and sat in endless mind-numbing meetings with many of them Occasionally the subject of those meetings was the contingency of disaster.
But they were there, and we were not. It was their business, and none of our business, yet still I found myself tempted to personalize – to look for the familiar, for those things to draw the tragedy closer, to make it more real and personal.
I thought it a morbid thing to do. It seemed eerie that people around me, with no connection to the event, would be drawn into it. I thought it odder still how people both personalize and depersonalize tragedy.
We nestle in the communion of television to watch horrible things happen to others. Sometimes these tragedies are real-time, most often they are not, only dramatizations of war, sinking ships, or shattered cities.
It is how we endure; the faith that bad things happen to others and we, blessed by fortune, stand a good chance of winning the Lotto. In our modern culture, this is literally the truth. Really bad things rarely happen to the majority of us, and in many ways, we have won the Lotto. Yet beneath this confidence is a fear that we satisfy before the television, compelling us to be mindful that everything we are, everything we have, hangs by a thin metallic thread of good luck.
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Comments: 49
in a way, there is no longer a place in the world that we can call safe. If not natural disasters, wars, strife or other tragedies, we seem to live on the edge of a thread, threatened in our daily lives by imagined and un-predictable events.
My sympathies are with the people who died in this tragedy.
Feeling safe is relative. We were watching Nova, the other night, interviewing Katrina survivors. The filmmakers did such a good job showing how the city flooded; which systems failed, etc., that it was frightening to watch. Even one of the scientists cried as he said he had known for years those would happen, no one listened to him and now all of those people perished. :(
It boggles the imagination how an Interstate bridge could buckle like that. My thoughts and prayers are with the recovery workers and the families of the missing.
Since we climbed down out of trees, our existence on this planet has always been tenuous. We banded together to increase the safety of individuals. And now, thousands of years after we cautiously left our caves, we have returned to them, hiding in the flickering firelight of TV, our doors locked, the faces of misery happening to others.
Occasionally, horrific events like this latest in Minneapolis, or those of 9-11, force us out of our comfortable homes and into the streets to grieve together, give shelter and help.
The news has given us the ability to see misery as it occurs all over our planet. Let's not become complacent and numb to the actual toll it takes on our humanity.
Too bad about the bridge, but those people chose to live there and use (and/or need to use) the bridge. As Greg indicated, rotten luck.
We value our lives and it's important for us to connect to those we need to. So my thoughts are for a prayer bridge in communtiy for those who are affected and to let them know we care.
A horrible thing to happen.
Safety is a relative thing, in todays world, anything can happen to anyone... When we sit and watch the news we can only thank that "metallic thread" of good luck that you mentioned...
That being said, if we keep carrying this fear with us, it just might lead us to tragedy...
Odd how I did not know about the bridge until I read about it here on Gather... Since we don't like TV reported news, I guess we rely on the Net to keep us abreast of what's happening around us.
I've learned that Gatherites are always more reliable than the corporate-owned news channels for quick and factual reporting of the news!
My prayers are with those that lost loved ones and those injured.
A stunning percentage of our nation's bridges have been deemed "structurally deficient." I've been reading about this problem for several years.
One of the many tragic consequences of neoconomics is the gutting of the public infrastructure, either through privatization or funding neglect, such as the case with our crumbling highway system.
This is the dirty little secret that should be brought fully into the light with this tragic event. In MN, the neocon governor recently vetoed a highway funding bill that would've tagged an additional 5c to a gallon of gas. All of that revenue would've gone directly to new highway projects, as well as much-needed repairs on existing roads.
Because the bill involved a tax increase, the knee-jerk reaction from the neocon governor was to veto and cast it aside. Btw, he's fine with the many "fees" that he's added since taking office, but has a real aversion to anything labeled a "tax."
He supposedly has national political ambitions, and is apparently under the impression that, while adding "fees" whenever the urge strikes him will not hamper his future goals, the mere thought of his signing onto a tax increase, regardless of what it's for or how critically important it is to public needs, will somehow hinder his aspirations.
I would personally like to see a national discussion about how we proceed as a nation, with regard to our public infrastructure. Are we going to continue to slash funding for critical infrastructure such as roadways, just so we can have politicians patting themselves on the back for cutting taxes?
Are we going to continue giving away our public infrastructure to companies like ENRON, so that they can ignore critical maintenance and anally rape their customers with price-gouging fraud and corruption? The blackout that affected a large portion of the nation a couple years ago was the direct result of an aging, failing power grid. While it was managed by the public sector, it was maintained on a regular basis. When it was handed over to private companies, critical maintenance was brushed aside, in exchange for higher profitability for those companies. Is this what we really want? Higher priced, but much less reliable power?
There are obviously things that private companies do far better than any public entity could. Managing the public infrastructure, the public commons, is not one of them. Widget companies make awesome widgets, and they're awesome at marketing and selling them, but they truly suck at managing our drinking water, sewage systems, police and fire departments, etc.
It's time to have this discussion, imo. Before we see yet more disasters unfold as a direct result of neoconomics, it's time to face these issues head on, and have a real, intelligent, rational discussion about just what kind of nation we all want to live in.
I recall this incident, because unbeknownst to me, 5 minutes away from my accident at the exact same time, two young men had the exact same type of accident, and neither of them survived.
I have felt horrible guilt since then, thinking that since the person driving and I both have children, that the powers that be decided to spare our lives so that we could both raise our children, and took theirs lives instead.
I have no reason to feel that guilt, since our accidents were in no way related, but I think that it's human nature to find a way to personalize tragic events in order to connect with others, or to try and rationalize something we don't really understand.
To this day I don't understand why I am still here, because my side of the car is the side that hit the ground first, and was completley caved in. In my mind I thank whoever it was that decided it wasn't my time to go, so that way I can live to see my baby boy grow up.
Speaking as an engineer, the safety of buildings and bridges should not be left to chance. All factors should be allowed for and then, on top of that, substantial factors of safety should be allowed for.
There should be an enquiry and the design calculations studied ver seriously.
Today, I have patience for cripples like you.
What filth and hate? I merely stated facts. How telling that, once again, you cannot relate to them, because, as usual, you don't know facts when they stare you in the face.
In case you hadn't noticed, in your rush to deliver your hatred towards ME, I offered prayers in my first paragraph. Btw, I live in the TC area as well, and could very well have friends who were involved in this. It's not a time to be spewing your usual hatred, Greg. It's time to offer support, and to examine the true root causes of what brought this about. Neoconomics.
"Today, I have patience for cripples like you."
Spare me. I have no need for anything from you, least of all your fraudulent, pathetic, self-serving pity. And, while you're tossing insults at those who're physically challenged, I'm not afraid to inform you that I happen to have a sister in law with MS. I know for a fact she wouldn't appreciate your offensive comment. Care to levy a "retard" insult at me while you're at it? I've got a nephew who happens to be severely retarded. I'm sure my other sister in law would really appreciate you abusing his affliction for your own sick personal use as well.
Who's spewing hatred?
Call me a cycnic here, but you can afford billions to kill people in war, but not billions to reconstruct bridges and save lives.
What is this world coming to?
Besides, it is an old wives tale made into popular opinion that there are accidents and senseless tragedies in this world ... there is a spiritual realm that oversees everything, and truth be known, there is a karmic principle of accounting and nothing happens to anyone but that there is not a reason and most often a learning to be had.
Those that wish to deny this are but making a more fearful reality with far less learning of the spiritual nature ... but no problem, there is something for each and all. we do in effect make our own realities to a large degree, and misery and fear love company.
The public seems to have a snooze alarm for wake-up calls and will probably sleep on.
Wake up along with all other Americans on how we are being completely screwed in Washington, and in our states. I am a structural engineer as well as a fire/rescue worker, and a patriot! Clark is 100% correct when he states how our government has neglected our infrastructure. I suspect I-35W will not be an isolated incident if we continue on the path we are on.
I have personally inspected several of the so called grade 5 bridges, and can tell you they are bad...not just mildly bad,,,,really bad. Like you can poke a pen through a main girder due to corrosion!
Debacles like Iraq are killing our country and our resources to take care of business at home. The American Society of Engineers (which I belong to) has recently graded our infrastructure. Guess what got a D or worse! Hmmm...our bridges, our water resources, and our electrical grid! The only warm fuzzy feeling that gives me is that I have lots of available work in coming years! Of course, I also keep lots of distilled water on hand, and have a backup generator also that is connected to our public gas supply grid along with propane backup.
Maybe there were design flaws in I-35W, but it worked fine for forty years. So the cause of the collapse has got to be related to lack of proper upkeep. Steel does not like corrosion or fatigue....eventually, all bridges will fail without proper maintenance. We call that mother nature.
Mother nature needs lots of money to fight her actions on our infrastructure. Clark is correct...the government is spending way to much on military actions, and way to little on actually protecting human life here at home. Just look at our southern border! An attacker could easilly walk across from Mexico with a small nuke on their back!
I realize that you and Clark may have political differences, but wake up to the new America! I don't support either party...both are corrupt beyond belief. I only support individual candidates who are for returning America to the Americans.
I feel very sorry for all who have suffered by the I-35W bridge collapse, but they have to realize that this is due to negligence on the part of our government. Whether it be local, state or federal level.
For example, look at the Golden Gate bridge or the Mackinaw bridge here in Michigan. Both of them are long spanned suspension bridges. Both of them have 24/7 maintenance on them. They never stop painting either of those bridges, and never stop inspecting them. It goes on 24/7 around the clock all year long! Compare that with the I-35W bridge...it was only inspected 2 years ago..I heard nothing about being painted, or reinforced at cracks or rusted areas.
The I-35W bridge was a bridge with zero redundancy. In general, a truss bridge will fail if any main structural member or connection fails. I suspect they will find that a main internal truss member failed near the south support of the main span. It most likely will be the connection of the member at one end, and most likely will be a tension member. We are talking about a connection that very well could have had one million pounds of force acting on it!
I find it beyond absurd that anyone would blame "lack of funding" for the bridge collapse in Minnesota. As everyone who lives in the Twin Cities knows there have been several massive freeway projects underway in Minnesota for years.
During the time in which the I35 bridge has been deemed "structurally deficient", the state has completed a multi-billion dollar renovation of I-394 and I-494. The state is currently engaged in a several hundred million dollar bridge replacement of the I-494 bridge over the Mississippi River south east of Saint Paul. In addition to projects underway, the state is the final planning stage of costly bridge over the Saint Croix to accommodate traffic from Wisconsin.
A logical mind would conclude that the collapse was not a matter of neglect but rather a matter of an inspection that missed a failing component. If the inspection had revealed the flaw, one of the project listed above would have been delayed and the I-35 bridge would have been replaced earlier.
As for the conspiracy theorists, they see conspiracy in everything and just as surely as the sun rises in the east each morning, they can be counted on to thrust their narcissim into the news that every morning brings.