Bridges

Here’s the Star Tribune coverage of the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, where at least four people were killed, 79 were injured, and 20 remain missing.

Dr. John Hick, who was one of the first responders to the bridge collapse, said “It’s somewhat of a miracle that (the number of injuries and fatalities) was that low.”

Hick also praised work done by passersby and people in area who jumped in to assist police and paramedics with evacuating the injured.

I look forward to learning more about these “passersby” who did not pass by.

Minnesota officials have said they believe the collapse was the result of “structural failure”:

State officials were answering questions about how and whether inspectors dealt with studies that said the bridge had “fatigue cracks” and was “structurally deficient.”

Here’s more from the Strib on that “structurally deficient” rating.

The National Bridge Inventory counted 67,587 of America’s 481,791 bridges as “structurally deficient” in 2006. (Here’s a searchable version of the NBI database.)

That rating doesn’t mean that a bridge is considered in danger of this kind of collapse, but with more than 67,000 deficient bridges nationwide, such a tragedy is not a surprise to anyone who’s been looking at the state of our national infrastructure.

The NBI survey was big news at the paper I work for, in Delaware, where “only” 35 bridges received the structurally deficient rating. The reaction there seemed to be that this meant the state should probably fix those 35 bridges. That meant figuring out how to pay for these repairs — something they’re still wrangling over in Dover. Similar wrangling is going on in Pennsylvania, where I live, where some 5,582 bridges are structurally deficient. (If you’re wondering about your home state, here’s the 2006 data.)

In Minnesota, where yesterday’s tragedy occurred, 1,135 bridges were found to be structurally deficient in last year’s inventory — including the I-35W bridge, where repairs were underway when yesterday’s collapse occurred.

Rick Perlstein provides some of the history of Minnesota’s transportation infrastructure:

This year two Democratic Minnesotan legislatures passed a $4.18 billion transportation package. Minnesota’s Republican governor vetoed it because he had taken a no-new-taxes pledge, Grover Norquist-style.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s tax pledge, like all such pledges, was doomed to produce some short-sighted decisions because it prohibits consideration of a whole range of questions it ought to be Pawlenty’s job to ask. When it comes to taxes, Pawlenty has pledged only to consider the question “How much?” That’s a legitimate question and an important one. It is his job to ask that question. But it is also his job to ask, “What for?.” A governor — or a legislator, or a president — who refuses to consider both questions is refusing to do the job.

Crooks & Liars notes that the wingers seem to be hoping that yesterday’s bridge collapse will turn out to have been an act of terrorism rather than the structural failure that officials on the scene are reporting. We have one bridge in the water. Maybe, to the wingers, the prospect of terrorism is less disturbing than the thought that we have another 67,586 structurally deficient bridges that Americans drive across every day. Those bridges will need to be fixed and those repairs will, in fact, cost money.