Thursday, August 02, 2007

I35W Bridge Collapse

We have a lot to be thankful for in this tragedy - THANK GOD that the school bus of students on the bridge didn't suffer any fatalities.

I got a call from Scottland asking how the country was doing, and I couldn't help but be amazed. Many news anchors were calling this "the worst tragedy" they've ever seen... despite having lived through 9/11. Personally, I'm thankful that my cousin in dental school at the U of M chose a different route to get home last night and left earlier than usual. I'm thankful that no Hazmat's were being transported on the bridge at the time of the collapse... the list goes on and on.

When I lived in the Twin Cities, I used this bridge every day to and from. It's kind of shocking that this happened. I've seen the bridge gridlocked, fully loaded, at a standstill. I just can't believe it "gave in" on its own. My gut instinct, despite Homeland Security's reassurances to the nation is that someone screwed up something on purpose on that bridge.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Indeed it was a tragedy. We got an email last night from our Japanese exchange student asking if we were alright. Wow, news travels fast. When you consider the number of people on that bridge when it collapsed it's amazing more weren't killed (though the final numbers aren't in.) Still, if you had a family member killed, the relatively small number is still too large. Prayers go out to the families of all the victims.

Matthew Nowlin said...

I just read that 145,000 people pass over that bridge every day during rush hour. Not sure how accurate that statistic is, but I know tons of people cross it.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the numbers I heard were 145,000 cars. If you average just 1.5 people per car that's 217,500. Mind boggling!