Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Watching CNN, 9:05, August 1, 2007

Johnny:"Jesus-- look at all that rebar-- that bridge must have twisted. How the hell did that happen?"
Kim: "Remember, that's the bridge that goes between St. Paul and Minneapolis."
Johnny: "You mean when we turned that curve and you can see Minneapolis? That was the first view I ever had of Minneapolis (Kim's hometown), when we went there last year-- it was from that bridge"
Kim: "Yeah."
Johnny: "Jesus, that bridge is huge. And it was rush hour. It's like eight lanes wide. God help them."

9 comments:

J.D. said...

Damn. Just really, really Damn.

Tenacious S said...

My big phobia is bridges. After feeling really awful for everyone inovolved the next thought I had was, "See, I'm not crazy!" How the heck did this happen?

MacGuffin said...

Our infrastructure in this country is going to shit. Spend a TRILLION on war but nickle and dime everything else.

Jenny Jenny Flannery said...

God help them and God help those with helping hands...

SkylersDad said...

I have been trying to get in touch with all my friends up there since I heard about it. I used to work for USWest (now Qwest) and was up there at least once a month.

I have heard from most of them fortunately, one of them passed over the bridge less than 15 minutes before it fell.

Macguffin is right about our country's infrastructure, there was a TV clip about it right after the steam break in NY, most of what we have been using for sewer, water, gas, electricity is way old right now...

The Elk said...

Bring on the Fear Mongers......

Foofa said...

I twas crazy indeed. I'm going there in a few weeks and could have very well passed over that bridge. Alternate route here I come.

bubbles said...

I found this post right about when published last night, JY. I came to the computer this morning and it was still on the screen. Of course, I dropped everything and headed for the news.

The coverage soon became so lame I couldn't stomach it, though. Pointless and irritating dumb questions that have no answers at this point.

Johnny Yen said...

J.D.
That's about all you can say, isn't it?

It's interesting, that it's a lot like a scene of a violent crime; on one hand, they need to rescue people, on the other hand, they need to document what they can to figure out the cause.

TenS-
Usually in a failure like this, there are three of four small things that are insignificant indivdiually, but catostrophic when they all fall into place in the right order.

My guess is that they need to be looking at the flooding they had recently-- the most common cause of bridge collapses is when running water erodes the underpinnings.

Macguffin-
Infrasturcture, education, health care-- it all takes a back seat to the fucked-up political agenda of the neo-conservatives and of course massive corporate profits.

Flannery-
I understand that a lot of people got in the water immediately and started helping people out of cars. And god bless that young school bus driver-- he kept his head and got all of those kids, many of whom were injured, off the school bus.

Skyler's Dad-
I hope all are well. We were lucky-- we've heard from all of our family and friends up there. My father in law is in the hospital, and my mother in law doesn't drive anymore, so we knew they were okay. Our biggest concern was with Kim's oldest, closest friend Anne, who usually goes over that bridge twice a day. She's fine-- and yes, she was on that bridge yesterday. There for the grace of god...

As I said with Macguffin, all this dough is available for the war against people who did nothing to us, but not for the safety of our own people. It's criminal.

Elk-
Yeah, they're gonna beat this one to death.

Natalie-
We're going up at the end of the month as well. We'll have to do the same.

Bubbles-
Yeah, the coverage started getting silly and repeticious. Still, I wanted to see footage of the bridge. The physics of the collapse was really strange-- one end is a twisted mess, and the rest of it fell straight down. Something really peculiar happened.