Bridge collapse in Minneapolis:
I cross the 35W bridge that collapsed tonight at least twice a day to go to and from work, often during rush hour. Tonight I left my office at about 5:45 p.m. and took the 10th Ave bridge right next to the 35W bridge in order to avoid the congestion created by the recent construction on it. It went down about 15 minutes later. If I'd taken the 35W bridge, as I usually would, there's a decent chance I would have been delayed in the congestion and stuck on it when it collapsed.
As I crossed the Mississippi River tonight, I looked over and saw the cars jam-packed on 35W and remember thinking, "Thank God I didn't go that way."
I, too, am glad that one of my favorite bloggers is unharmed. I'm not quite sure it's seemly to thank a higher power for removing somebody you know from harm, so that somebody unknown to you can suffer the fate they would have endured (if Carpenter was on the bridge, then the last car that fell into the river would have been the first car not to).
Just a thought....
I used to live in that area. Now is really not a good time to crack wise while rescuers are still trying to find the bodies.
For those of you who don't know, the 35W bridge is about a par 5 away from the law school. The tall building you see nearby are pretty much across the street.
I am so very glad that you are OK. I hope the same is true of the rest of our colleagues and friends.
(2) I am glad Dale is safe. I am glad for all who are safe and I am sorry for those who are not. I find it a tad distasteful that certain comments seem to hope that the injured parties are not among the group identified as "the rest of our colleagues and friends." Why can't we just wish for GENERAL non-injury?
(3) As for Dave, I don't think he realized that there were deaths and injuries involved. If he had, I don't think he would have made those comments that are insensitive in light of today's occurrence. Well, at least I hope.
Absolutely. I wish for nobody to ever get hurt, or get sick, or (gasp!) die. I also want a pony.
The 35W bridge collapse is real, and its victims deserve sympathy, assistance as needed, and best wishes.
Glad you are ok Dale.
Banned. If I was an admin, Oren would be banned for that comment. C'mon, Dale isn't loking for sympathy; he just had an experience that made him realize how fragile life is. There's no reason to be a jacka$$ toward someone who is just saying he is thankful to be alive.
It's truly humbling to consider the most inconsequential decisions and the extraordinary consequences they can have.
Oren,
I don't think Dale was for sympathy. This sort of thing just makes you think about how small things like taking a different route than usual or getting stuck at a stop light, can put you in a situation or out of it. Me I am just glad the bridge didn't come down a half hour earlier.
This just up on "Overlawyered". Talk about sick, and disgusting (and typical).
I don't think it's distasteful at all.
Something is wrong with a man who reacts the same way to the news that a stranger has died as he does to the news that his friend or his brother or his wife or his child has died.
Human beings all have their own networks of attachment and relationship, and it is both natural and right to be concerned with those we're connected to.
This is not exclusive of a hope for general non-injury, nor does it mean that each of us doesn't have ties to the entire human race. It's a recognition of the joys and sorrows of the particularities of human life.
To my mind, feeling relief that it wasn't a friend honours the loss of life more than treating the lost as interchangeable does.
The above having been said: yesterday there were reports of seven confirmed dead. Today there were reports it is merely four, with still at least twenty missing. Here's praying that it's merely government incompetence, and that both numbers turn out to be zero.
A tragedy. Life is full of uncertainty, and I grieve for those whose lives were cut short so abruptly yesterday.
Are bridges safe? Uh, yes they are. Was this bridge safe yesterday at the moment it collapsed? Uh, no it wasn't.
1. Some democrat or member of the NAACP or similar organization claims that Bush blew up the bridge just like he blew up the damns in New Orleans.
2. Some democrat or member of the NAACP claims the federal government response to this is far better because it involved white people compared to New Orleans which was far worse because it involved black people.
Just wondering,
Says the "Dog"
Please, not today.
VC is not capable of banning anyone.
Anybody got a pool going on when conservatives will try to twist this to their rhetorical advantage by making outlandish claims of what "Some democrat or member of the NAACP or similar organization" will claim.
Oh sorry, that's right. Even the conservatives don't want to stand up and claim the "Dog." And I can understand why. But, Democrats also shouldn't have to defend every wacko on the left either.
I have a post at OpenMarket that discusses these absurd claims:
Bridge Collapse Falsely Blamed on Low Taxes by Europeans
Hans Bader | 8/2/2007 @ 11:14 am
"A Dutch friend of a CEI staffer passed on the fact that some Dutch and German newspapers today are filled with hateful comments online about yesterday’s bridge collapse in Minneapolis. 'I just checked two Dutch news papers and people can leave comments… and it sickened me at times. People are so uninformed or simple minded that they leave comments like "that happens if you don’t pay tax"' and '"You spent all that money on the war but not your own people."'
"The irony is that Minnesota, in which the bridge collapse occurred, has some of the highest state and local taxes in the country.
"There isn’t much correlation between bridge and road quality and levels of state taxation. South Carolina has much lower taxes than New York State, and its roads and bridges are in a much better state of repair. Roads in much of New York State are full of cracks, while South Carolina roads tend to be smooth and even-surfaced.
Part of the reason for bad infrastructure is that the word 'investment' is now used by big-spending government officials to describe all manner of government programs, rather than true investments like roads and bridges.
"It is now a common political ploy to refer to increases in government medical and education spending as “investments” even though increased K-12 educational spending has virtually no effect on, and no correlation with, student learning (there is a strong correlation, in contrast, between a state’s proximity to the Canadian border and how well its students perform in math), and increased medical spending just improves the financial situation of the beneficiaries of the spending, and has virtually no effect on life expectancy. (New York State spends twice as much on health care, per capita, as California, without providing better health care, much less increased life spans).
"By falsely referring to the welfare state as an 'investment,' advocates of big government have made it easier to divert to welfare and social services government funds that should have been invested in roads and bridges instead.
"The result is that transportation has been on a steady downward spiral as part of state budgets, while state health-care spending has exploded, and teacher pay is at an all-time high in inflation-adjusted terms. (Average teacher pay in my county is over $70,000 in base pay for a 10-month school year)."
www.openmarket.org/2007/08/02/bridge-collapse-
falsely-blamed-on-low-taxes-by-europeans/
I don't want anybody to die and I don't want anybody to get hurt but in a nation of 300 million people on has to content oneself with merely having only a statistically insignificant portion of the people getting hurt or killed.
The collapse of a bridge (or the crash of an airplane) is no more meaningful than the crash of a car excepting that the latter happen in ones and twos and are not generally considered "newsworthy". According to the NHTSA, 44,000 people die in car crashes in 2005 or more than 100/day.
Where's the sympathy for them (well, a lot are drunks and had it coming but many were perfectly innocent)? Where's the news coverage?
Why is it that Americans cannot get it through their emotion-addled brains to put things in proper perspective?
South Carolina does not freeze and thaw hundreds of times a year.
Actually, I read the Daily Kos, and no, no one there has yet claimed that Bush blew up the bridge.
Nor do they engage in that stuff. Bush does enough damage to the country that is on the record that one has a hard time keeping up with just that. No need to make stuff up.
Perhaps you should actually read Daily Kos instead of casting aspersions based on what other people say it says.
In all of the above cases, someone with the power to bestow benefit and hurt chose to benefit you and/or hurt someone else. God, in saving you, killed someone else; God, in making you a comfortable American, made someone else a starving Congolese; God, in making you human, made some other soul a veal calf; your parents, in giving you a toy, deprived another less-fortunate child they could have given it to instead.
Also, maybe your being benefited didn't hurt anyone else. Maybe no one took your place on the bridge, or in the Congo, or in the feeding pen. In any event, a close shave like this means that God, or whoever, for whatever reason, bestowed a favor upon you, and that is worthy of thanks.
Another appropriate, and perhaps more saintly, response would be "God, why did you kill them but not me?" The fact that one might say that doesn't make thanking God for considering you worthy of not being killed any more sinful.
As the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card 2005 points out, we're $1.6 trillion behind in infrastructure investment. That, by the way, is the amount of tax cuts Mister Bush tried to get passed in 2001, before he had the Global War on Terrorism™ with which to shape his legacy. Congress "compromised" and gave him only $1.35 trillion, tax cuts that writer Robert Freeman once labeled a "national form of insanity."
What the ASCE's report points out is that bridges aren't our only problem:
Dams (D+) Since 1998, the number of unsafe dams has risen by 33% to more than 3,500. While federally owned dams are in good condition, and there have been modest gains in repair, the number of dams identified as unsafe is increasing at a faster rate than those being repaired. $10.1 billion is needed over the next 12 years to address all critical non-federal dams--dams which pose a direct risk to human life should they fail. ...
Drinking Water (D-) America faces a shortfall of $11 billion annually to replace aging facilities and comply with safe drinking water regulations. Federal funding for drinking water in 2005 remained level at $850 million, less than 10% of the total national requirement. The Bush administration has proposed the same level of funding for FY06. ...
Schools (D) The Federal government has not assessed the condition of America's schools since 1999, when it estimated that $127 billion was needed to bring facilities to good condition. Other sources have since reported a need as high as $268 billion. Despite public support of bond initiatives to provide funding for school facilities, without a clear understanding of the need, it is uncertain whether schools can meet increasing enrollment demands and the smaller class sizes mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act. ...
Transit (D+)Transit use increased faster than any other mode of transportation--up 21%--between 1993 and 2002. Federal investment during this period stemmed the decline in the condition of existing transit infrastructure. The reduction in federal investment in real dollars since 2001 threatens this turnaround. In 2002, total capital outlays for transit were $12.3 billion. The Federal Transit Administration estimates $14.8 billion is needed annually to maintain conditions, and $20.6 billion is needed to improve to "good" conditions. Meanwhile, many major transit properties are borrowing funds to maintain operations, even as they are significantly raising fares and cutting back service. ...
Wastewater (D-) Aging wastewater management systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated sewage into U.S. surface waters each year. The EPA estimates that the nation must invest $390 billion over the next 20 years to replace existing systems and build new ones to meet increasing demands. Yet, in 2005, Congress cut funding for wastewater management for the first time in eight years. The Bush administration has proposed a further 33% reduction, to $730 million, for FY06.
This ought to be a no-brainer.
It's understandable in impoverished Chad or Haiti or East Timor or the back-country of the People's Republic of China. But there is no excuse for lethal tumbledown infrastructure in this country. Congress gave Mister Bush $1.35 trillion in tax cuts. Congress has appropriated $600 billion (so far, with more to come) for a war that should never have happened. Congress enables the military-industrial complex to vacuum up additional hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars annually. Congress just approved $25 billion in annual farm subsidies, the vast majority of which go to rich farmers.
And people wonder about the morals of our country. Sheesh....
I may not agree with you much, but I am thanking God that you will still be around to help keep my brain moving. Keep up the good work and stay safe.
To address the commenter above, as a guy originally from Philly I know all too well how the construction industry is a huge source of political patronage and graft, a la Boss Tweed. The money available isn't the issue, it's the corruption. See, e.g. Big Dig. Of course, I can't wait to hear how we need some sort of tax raise because of this, as we always do.
There's nothing like a catastrophe to revoke a "no new taxes" pledge.
Can you say "backlash"?
There was a discussion not long ago on the VK about whether people really get the government that they deserve. Clearly, in Minnesota, the people have decided that funding sports stadiums and neglecting infrastructure is what they want.
This is pure insanity.
I am also very grateful that many of my friends made the same decision to avoid the construction and traffic on 35W.
I am praying that everybody from the law school made the same decision. This shows some perspective as to how close our school is to the bridge.
I am very sad for those that lost loved ones, and sad for our community that has to deal with this tragedy.
Randy,
Most people are against the stadium funding. The local governments would even let us vote on it because they knew it would fail. Minnesota is one of the highest taxed states in the US. This wasn't even a case of money at all. It was a case of MNDOT not recognizing and correctly an issue. The tax money is there, although the hard part is getting the state to spend it wisely and to quit throwing it way on worthless programs, and terrible public transportation options (light rail).
That we didn’t get a room there only means somebody else did get the room.
Just as there were people who canceled trips at the last minute and thus survived 9/11 there were people who booked at the last minute and died. Meetings in the towers that were canceled also mean meetings that probably were only planned at the last minute as well.
Now if I were theistic I might say God saved me. But the problem I have with this is that it implies this deity condemned the others. Often minor decisions lead to major results. When the German government wanted to spy on a group of radicals then sent someone to infiltrate the group. The group was the National Socialists and the spy was Adolph Hitler.
I´m missing the aspect of death being nothing very tragic in God´s eyes.
God calls us home, he will have his reasons. Maybe he had planned only
so much time for our experience in this existance.
Death is a part of life. We don´t even know if wether it is the end.
Of course we cherrish life, at least we should. And take any case of death as
a reminder that it is not selfspoken to be alive this morning, tomorrow.
Nor that our friends and families are. And as a motivation to not "postpone" the honest, righteous life we intend to lead to a tomorrow, ´cause there just might not be one.
I feel sympathy for the families and loved ones of anyone who died
a sudden death, because I know many people will have regrets of not
having expressed their love while there was time. So make sure you will
not be one I have to feel much sympathy for ; ) .