A bridge on I-35 in the Twin Cities collapsed this evening. I first heard of it when I stopped on Judy's blog. How awful... The reports now say that six people died. If you take a look at the pictures, it's amazing that there weren't more... Edited to add: As of this morning (Thursday), they have lowered the death toll to 4. There is updated info. here. But the estimate that they are giving is that as many as 20-30 people are yet unaccounted for... UPDATED FRI: Here is the recent info.
Ironically, I recently read an article in a Reader's Digest* about our failing infrastructure and why bridges are collapsing with more frequency.
When the highway system was first created during Eisenhower's time it was designed for the amount of cars and traffic of the time. The traffic and amount of cars on our roads has quadrupled since then, causing the system to weaken. - And thus, more bridges are collapsing as a result. The statistic that they gave was that 156,000 bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete. That's just a few too many, if you ask me...
*Reader's Digest October 2006, p. 100. (I'm a little behind on my issues... ;)
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4 comments:
Terrible, hey?!? It's all over the news, of course.
Interesting data you just recently read about bridges. I'm hoping the big one we will go over in the morning is safe and sound...
I hope so too! :) I'm a nervous wreck whenever I go over big bridges so those stats sure don't help any... Lol.
That is such a terrible thing! It looked horrible in those pictures! And here I just got over my fear of going over the Big Mac!! I'm thinking that it will be returning again!
that is soo scary that that bridge just broke like that! ive been over that bridge so many times and when brad lived there, he went over it every day to and from work!i have always been scared out of my mind going over bridges, especially bridges over water! so yeah that totally didnt help me get over my fear!
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