Bridge Collapses

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... ;)