Major bridge Collapse over Mississippi River in Minneapolis

[white-eagle]

Craig, glad you and your family are safe. 

we'll look forward to your report of the fun of traveling in a bus.

we'll also pray for those that happened to be on the bridge.  what a terrible experience to live thru, but thank goodness they did.  God help those that didn't.

[belfert]

Anyone heard from Brian Elfert yet?  Anyone have his phone and can call and make sure he is okay?

I'm fine.  I normally take the I35W bridge to/from work, but I have rarely taken that route recently due to road repairs on both the bridge and the three miles north of the bridge.  (The initial thoughts are the deck repairs on the bridge did not cause the collapse, but we won't know for days or weeks.)

I work at the Star Tribune newspaper probably less than 1 mile from the bridge and we had an outage of our remote access for reporters and photographers that I was repairing this evening.  This had a high priority since the biggest local story in a number of years had just broken.

I think they have gone way overboard on road closures for I35W.  They have closed some five or six miles north of the bridge. 

Commuting is going to suck for probably years for me as they don't build a bridge like this overnight.  It will be ten times worse when it snows over the winter.

[Busted Knuckle]

Belfert, Brian D, and Gumpy  glad to hear y'all are ok! I just got in from being gone to Memphis all day, and was reading the first I'd heard about this here! I was going to call and check on Belfert when I saw where he'd checked in! God bless y'all and everyone else up there! Now I wonder about Paul? If we haven't heard from him tomorrow I'll call and check! Although his stomp'n groinds are SW of the cities he could 've still been comuting!
BK

[NewbeeMC9]

Glad our members are ok,  heart and prayers go out to those affected by a travesty that we won't know the full extent of for a while.

[Brian Diehl]

I've left a message for Paul ... hoping he calls back soon ...

[Kirby-XL40-FL]

Not only this bridge.... bad news for us travelers, but the Fox News commentators this morning are reporting that they have been told 80,000 bridges (defined as any span of more than 20 feet) in the U.S. are rated as "structurally deficient" to the same degree as this collapsed one.  This may not necessarily mean they will imminently collapse, but that there are structural problems of some kind.  My wife used to work for a government agency in south Florida that has four bridges in its jurisdiction, so is somewhat familiar with the system.  The state sends engineers to inspect all bridges and they are rated (percentage-wise) as to their structural sufficiency.  Engineers are typically conservative on such matters, so it is appalling to see this Minnesota disaster.  Makes you wonder.

BTW, for years my wife has had a fear of bridges (officially called gephyrophobia) and the longer/higher the bridge, the higher her anxiety level.  Now I won't be laughing at her. 

Kirby

[BusCrazyTom]

It is truly a tragedy and one of my worst nightmares. I cringe every time I must cross something like the Delaware Memorial. Whatever vehicle you are in needs to be equipped with a windshear warning system! I am sorry for the dead, and all the survivors who will never be the same.

Tom

[Hobie]

needs to be equipped with a windshear warning system

What is this?  Is for winter ice only?  I thought that was for aircraft?  Please go into more detail.

[BusCrazyTom]

Mr. Hobie,

Just my small attempt at humor. A wind shear warning system is for an aircraft. It will let you know when strong windshear occurs. The joke was that when you're that high up on a bridge, especially the Delaware Memorial, your vehicle is getting blown around something awful, so this piece of aircraft equipment would be useful, but of course noy practical.

Tom

[belfert]

Bridges are constantly called out as the weak link in our transportation system.   There seem to be news items at least once a year talking about the poor health of lots of bridges.

But, I believe a lot of these are smaller bridges on two lane highways and such.  The Northeast also has a lot of bad bridges as they built their highways much earlier.  Minnesota actually had been fairly highly rated for bridges compared to other states even though we still have a number of bridges that are rated deficeint.

The USA as a whole simply does not have enough money to maintain our roads properly as construction costs skyrocket.  Everyone wants money spent on congestion and don't care as much about maintenance since it doesn't help them get to home/work faster and easier.  There simply is not enough money to maintain all the roads we do have and still build more.

I suspect more money will now go into repairs of existing bridges which will mean tax increases or less construction to relieve congestion.

[Hobie]

Joke now understood.  Some of us are a little slow!   

On a serious note,  the talk of increasing our taxes to repair or better inspect bridges will probably happen.  I am not happy as look at much we pay for gas tax now and look at how it is being spent.  Not on new interstates.  They have been in for years.  And paid for with much less tax revenue to boot.  It sure appears this gas taxes just go into the general fund to be spent on, "other than transportation" or carpool lanes.  Don't get me started on the social problems!

[Lee Bradley]

Bridges are constantly called out as the weak link in our transportation system.   There seem to be news items at least once a year talking about the poor health of lots of bridges.

But, I believe a lot of these are smaller bridges on two lane highways and such.  The Northeast also has a lot of bad bridges as they built their highways much earlier.  Minnesota actually had been fairly highly rated for bridges compared to other states even though we still have a number of bridges that are rated deficeint.

The USA as a whole simply does not have enough money to maintain our roads properly as construction costs skyrocket.  Everyone wants money spent on congestion and don't care as much about maintenance since it doesn't help them get to home/work faster and easier.  There simply is not enough money to maintain all the roads we do have and still build more.

I suspect more money will now go into repairs of existing bridges which will mean tax increases or less construction to relieve congestion.

Must disagree; there is plenty of money to build and maintain the US interstructure, roads, bridges, water systems, etc. The problem is politicians don't see any votes in these issues.  So money that should be spent on building and maintenance goes to beatification projects and art for the masses and an endless list of projects they hope will get them re-elected. Our junior senator got a bundle of Federal tax dollars for a Art Park in Seattle, why Federal money is being spent on city art projects is beyond me. Of course none of these projects will be scraped so the money can be spent on interstructure, new taxes will have to be levied.

[Dreamscape]

It is all about priorities, and some of our duly elected politicians pork barrel the stuff like crazy. I agree there are a lot of our dollars being waisted on frivolous things.

Glad I don't waste any of our money, cause I have a Bus Conversion!

Paul

[Len Silva]

...and yet we can find a trillion dollars for a stupid, ill conceived war that will accomplish nothing.

Len

[FloridaCliff]

Guy's,

We all can only hope and push for a better discussion on our infrastructure after this disaster.

Unfortunately this is sometimes what it takes to get people in general to say "Whats going on here".

Paul wrote: Glad I don't waste any of our money, cause I have a Bus Conversion!

Paul,  Thanks for the BIG 


Cliff