Some of you may remember last summer when a major bridge crossing the Mississippi into Minneapolis collapsed:
It brings up a lot of horrific memories of that event, less than one year ago.
Well amazingly enough, yesterday the construction crew completed the connection of both sides of the river on the new 35W bridge. It was just a catwalk across the last open 7 feet, but we’ll take it.
The healing process continues.
I am glad for you guys, that bridge collpase scared alot of people across the country, especially those of us with family up there. My nephew and his wife crossed that bridge everyday.
Is this like the ‘collapse’ of the three WTC buildings?
No, just human ignorance this time time. If I am not mistaken it collpased due to age and lack of maintenance and possible substandard material, I think the last one i can’t quite recall if the material was brought into question.
but OH NO, it will take 10 years to build drills and refineries for more oil…
fucking liberal liars…
-Imp
The collapse of the bridge, as terrible as it was, simply pointed to the collapse of any focus on our infrastructure as we decided to devote all our money and energy to overseas adventurism. Every state now faces a mountain of problems with aging infrastructure - not just bridges. Why? Too much reliance on federal input and money. Remember our last big black out? The reports came back that we needed a huge overhaul of our electrical supply grid. What has been done? Next to nothing. Why? Because we are fighting for “democracy” in the middle east. Even if the responsible bureaucracies managed to put together a coherent plan of action, the massive amount of money necessary wouldn’t be there without a tax increase or a giant increase in the cost of electricity, or both. The planning and execution of upgrading infrastructure is only ocurring on a crisis basis because there is no focus on domestic policy and hasn’t been for way too long.
It’s time for some management changes and get some compentency back into the bureaucracies that are responsible for bridges, electrical supply, roads, rails, and everything we depend on to get through our day.
I’m with you. If anything good came out of this tragedy, it was the renewed focus on infrastructure. For at least a month after the bridge went down, I was hyper-aware of all of the bridges I travelled on or under each day - they are everywhere. I no longer take for granted that things like that are automatically going to be safe.
The two busiest bridges in Birmingham were both destroyed by overturned and burning tanker trucks within a year of one another. They rebuilt both in less than 30 days each. Traffic was a bitch though while they were.
30 days?! Wow, I’d be a little nervous about bridges that went up that fast.
Most bridges are incredibly simple structures actually, at least compared to oil refineries.
They worked continuously. Like 3 shifts of something.
It would be nice to have it back up that quickly - the way traffic has been rerouted this past year has been a pain. But then, I feel incredibly petty bitching about that when people died and were seriously injured. I guess a little extra traffic isn’t such an inconvenience… 