I-35W bridge collapse
Wednesday Aug 15, 2007
On our recent vacation, we visited with relatives in the Twin Cities area. We were in town when the I-35W bridge collapsed, but were safely miles away from the bridge when it collapsed. There are many bridges over the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers in the area, and we crossed a few of them a few times, but not the one that collapsed, as we weren't going to anything in that direction from where we were based, at my mom's house in Bloomington.
My son Nick was particularly concerned about the bridge collapsing, and we sought to reassure both Nick and his little brother Sam that the other bridges on which we were traveling were safe. I guess I've got to believe that or lose all faith in our various governments and somehow never cross a bridge. Sorry, but I can't avoid bridges here in central Texas and I can't avoid them when I visit Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes (and many rivers).
There was another collapse some years ago when the Lake Street bridge over the Mississippi was being replaced. The new bridge under construction collapsed. Oddly, they had a very difficult time bringing down the old bridge that supposedly needed replacement.
This bridge collapse causes lots of thoughts and discussion:
- This is traumatic to those involved in the collapse, who have been injured or lost loved ones. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
- The collapse of a bridge on a major artery through a metropolitan area of 2-3 million people is disruptive. How disruptive remains to be seen, but I expect traffic to be a mess and expect some difficulties with downtown Minneapolis tourism and convention business until the bridge is replaced.
- Just how safe are our bridges? There's now a debate going on over whether we're doing enough to inspect bridges and replace those that need replacement. I've seen some figures that show this is currently under funded in a big way. I hope various governments will fix the inspection and funding problems without too much politicking. I think the problem has been developing for some time and I don't think you can pin it on either party at this point (not that it won't be tried). You can pin it on misplaced priorities that spend our tax money (and borrowed money) for other things and give short shrift to domestic infrastructure spending.
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