Bridge Over Troubled Water

Hello, it's me again; once again after too long of a period of time. I have my reasons.

Something happened yesterday that I just can't ignore here, though. My Minnesota roots demand it, I think. Besides, I'm of the mood to write about this. Life hasn't been good to me for the last few weeks, you see. Then, I get up today to go eat and read the newspaper and see this. Needless to be said, it didn't help my mood.

Yesterday, during rush hour in Minneapolis, the I-35W bridge fell into the Mississippi River; at latest count (I've been checking the internet) there are at least 4 dead and over 50 injured, some still missing. A total tragedy. My heart goes out to those who were injured and the families of those who lost loved ones.

Minnesota is a land full of water - be it numerous lakes or the creeks and rivers that join them. This, of course, also means that it has many bridges. These bridges are vital to the state's infrastructure, and directly contribute to every one of it's citizen's livelihood and well-being. The importance of these bridges cannot be understated. How, then, can something like this happen?

Readers of this blog pretty much know that I tend to stay away from political issues in here. That's not because I consider myself politically ignorant, however. I just don't want this blog of mine to be a "soapbox". There are plenty of those. I prefer to blog about light and humorous things, whether I make them up or just report them. This story, however, has nothing funny about it. This may be the only time I ever do this in this blog, but I'm going to pontificate now.

Back when I was in the Navy, I worked in the nuclear power area. It was very complex, complicated, and high-tech. By it's very nature, it was also potentially very dangerous. Basically, the way the system was run was that if anything bad (or even remotely bad) happened, a lot of people spent a significant amount of time figuring out what went wrong and then figuring out how to prevent it from happening again. The procedures (or procedural changes) that were developed from this were then re-incorporated into the system and everyone, from top to bottom, was made to know and understand them. Many in the system (myself included) considered this method to be a major pain in the ass, but it did work pretty well. From what I understand, it still does.

Applying the above logic to the bridge issue brings us this:

1. We need to determine exactly what the cause of the bridge failure was.

2. We need to use these findings to determine the safety of ALL bridges of this type.

3. We need to repair or replace, as necessary, ALL the bridges deemed necessary by the first two procedures, IMMEDIATELY.

Perhaps I'm stating the obvious here, but it seems to me that our society depends upon our infrastructure to such a great extent that we CAN NOT ALLOW this sort of thing to happen again. Whatever the reason for the bridge's failure, if we could have done something to prevent it, we should have. The alternative is unthinkable.

Again, my deepest sympathies to the victims, and their families, of this tragedy.