I-35W Bridge

This is crazy. The I-35W bridge fell. It just fell. It wasn’t hit by a barge. There wasn’t a storm. No earthquake. No terrorists. It just fell. And not just part of it. All of it. The entire thing collapsed. Events of this sort just don’t happen here. Unexplained tragedies happen elsewhere. In places far away that they don’t effect us. Like other countries. Or New York. Far enough away where they don’t impact normal everyday life.

I don’t live or work in the area. I don’t travel the bridge regularly. I wasn’t on the bridge that day. I don’t have a story about how I should have been on the bridge. So far I don’t know of anyone who I know personally who was injured. In fact, at first I wasn’t quite sure where the bridge was. I couldn’t picture it. I know I have been on it numerous times. And even now I know where it is but I can’t envision crossing it. It doesn’t make as vivid a picture in my mind as say, the 610 bridge does.

However, this is the first tragedy I’ve heard of where the death toll was dropped. This morning it was 9. Now it’s 4. Did they miscount? Were rumors started? Maybe they had a misdiagnoses. And how can they say 20 missing? They only have estimates of how many cars went in the water. How do they get that number? Is it the number of people reported missing? They have said there are cars under the cars. And how deep is the water there anyway? It’s a good thing we haven’t had much rain this summer as the water levels were all down.

They’ve also said that the traffic cameras were turned off due to construction, but a security camera of a nearby building may have recorded a portion of the collapse. I hope it did, that would be interesting to see.

Yesterday I was looking online at information for scuba diving certification and I noticed a section for rescue diver certification. My first thought was that would be neat, but how often would you use your skill here in MN? Sure there are a lot of lakes, but the only time you hear about searches they are looking to recover a particular body, not masses of people that may or may not be alive. Perhaps the rescue divers came from far and wide for the searches today.

On a side note, last night when I found out about the bridge, the first thing that crossed my mind was that there was some guy at a radio station somewhere getting audio clips organized for a tribute song. What do you think was playing when I got in my car this morning?

I think that is all I need to get off my mind for now.