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| Martha |
My Uncle and his family live in MN. His oldest son witnessed the bridge collapsing and rushed to the scene to help. He assisted someone trapped in a car and once they were freed my cousin jumped into the water to help others. He landed on some metal and cut his leg very badly needing over 20 stitches. The Dr. who stitched him up told him to see a counselor for the trauma. No one in my family was hurt and I am so releived to hear our board members are also safe.
What a nightmare.
Prayers.
Martha |
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| Chuck |
Public anger will follow our sorrow
By Nick Coleman
Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/10204/story/1339911.html
Last update: August 02, 2007 – 11:33 AM
The cloud of dust above the Mississippi that rose after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed Wednesday evening has dissipated. But there are other dark clouds still hanging over Minneapolis and Minnesota.
The fear of falling is a primal one, along with the fear of being trapped or of drowning.
Minneapolis suffered a perfect storm of nightmares Wednesday evening, as anyone who couldn't sleep last night can tell you. Including the parents who clench their jaws and tighten their hands on the wheel every time they drive a carload of strapped-in kids across a steep chasm or a rushing river. Don't panic, you tell yourself. The people in charge of this know what they are doing. They make sure that the bridges stay standing. And if there were a problem, they would tell us. Wouldn't they?
What if they didn't?
The death bridge was "structurally deficient," we now learn, and had a rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were all the other way.
Would you drive your kids or let your spouse drive over a bridge that had a sign saying, "CAUTION: Fifty-Percent Bridge Ahead"?
No, you wouldn't. But there wasn't any warning on the Half Chance Bridge. There was nothing that told you that you might be sitting in your over-heated car, bumper to bumper, on a hot summer day, thinking of dinner with your wife or of going to see the Twins game or taking your kids for a walk to Dairy Queen later when, in a rumble and a roar, the world you knew would pancake into the river.
There isn't any bigger metaphor for a society in trouble then a bridge falling, its concrete lanes pointing brokenly at the sky, its crumpled cars pointing down at the deep waters where people disappeared.
Only this isn't a metaphor.
The focus at the moment is on the lives lost and injured and the heroic efforts of rescuers and first-responders - good Samaritans and uniformed public servants. Minnesotans can be proud of themselves, and of their emergency workers who answered the call. But when you have a tragedy on this scale, it isn't just concrete and steel that has failed us.
So far, we are told that it wasn't terrorists or tornados that brought the bridge down. But those assurances are not reassuring.
They are troubling.
If it wasn't an act of God or the hand of hate, and it proves not to be just a lousy accident - a girder mistakenly cut, a train that hit a support - then we are left to conclude that it was worse than any of those things, because it was more mundane and more insidious: This death and destruction was the result of incompetence or indifference.
In a word, it was avoidable.
That means it should never have happened. And that means that public anger will follow our sorrow as sure as night descended on the missing.
For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.
I'm not just pointing fingers at Pawlenty. The outrage here is not partisan. It is general.
Both political parties have tried to govern on the cheap, and both have dithered and dallied and spent public wealth on stadiums while scrimping on the basics.
How ironic is it that tonight's scheduled groundbreaking for a new Twins ballpark has been postponed? Even the stadium barkers realize it is in poor taste to celebrate the spending of half a billion on ballparks when your bridges are falling down. Perhaps this is a sign of shame. If so, it is welcome. Shame is overdue.
At the federal level, the parsimony is worse, and so is the negligence. A trillion spent in Iraq, while schools crumble, there aren't enough cops on the street and bridges decay while our leaders cross their fingers and ignore the rising chances of disaster.
And now, one has fallen, to our great sorrow, and people died losing a gamble they didn't even know they had taken. They believed someone was guarding the bridge.
We need a new slogan and we needed it yesterday:
"No More Collapses."
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| pdog |
How long until we blame Bush? Is there an appropriate time period or should we just start now. |
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| glencar |
I believe that idiot Motels did same on the previous page. Nothing that happens in the USA today can be non-political. That won't happen until a Dem is returned to office. Say, here's some insanity!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1496780 |
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| Fiji Joe |
Message boards are good reminders of the great number of idiots on this planet...all votes should not be equal...I have always been convinced of that |
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| Starbuck |
coleman has a point, and you can't disagree. this disaster has made us all aware of a huge problem in our society. is it good that we have thousands of bridges in this country that are somewhat structurally deficient?
i for one would sacrifice my baseball stadium for sounder bridges.
and smaller class sizes too! |
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| glencar |
NYC is building 2 new stadiums for the Metsies & the Yankees & IMO neither one should be replaced. Our bridges seem to always be in a constant state of repair so we're okay as far as that's concerned. |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
[quote]glencar wrote:
I believe that idiot Motels did same on the previous page. quote]
I haven't posted on this thread until just now. I have no idea what you're talking about. |
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| Chuck |
ASCE report card for America's infrastructure:
http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=103 |
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| glencar |
oops! I confused you w/Joey. Sorry! |
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| robpop |
We just built two new stadiums in Pittsburgh. Mario Lemieux has been crying for a new arena like a little bitch for years now. So he's getting it.
I do believe Pittsburgh has more bridges than any other city in the country. You should see some of these bridges. Sidewalks closed because of holes going all the way through the walk. All these bridges are coming of age at the same time.
Our infrastructure is getting worse. I feel for the familes of those who lost their lives. We can only hope that they woke the rest of us up. |
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| caro |
quote:
The death bridge was "structurally deficient," we now learn, and had a rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were all the other way.
Would you drive your kids or let your spouse drive over a bridge that had a sign saying, "CAUTION: Fifty-Percent Bridge Ahead"?
That's a bit childish IMHO. "50%" may sound frightening, but it's just some abstract calculation that only makes sense to people who work in that field. They could just as well have called it "level 6" or "yellow", or whatever.
Then, you need to set a threshold that determines the momentto when it becomes mandatory to rebuild the bridge (unless you are willing to replace every piece of infrastructure as soon as it's built). From then on, either you follow the guidelines or you don't. That thing about "erring on the safe side" seems irrelevant to me. |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
glencar wrote:
oops! I confused you w/Joey. Sorry!
OK.
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| Fiji Joe |
quote:
Starbuck wrote:
i for one would sacrifice my baseball stadium for sounder bridges.
Done correctly, your baseball stadium pays for sounder bridges |
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| Fiji Joe |
quote:
caro wrote:
That's a bit childish IMHO. "50%" may sound frightening, but it's just some abstract calculation that only makes sense to people who work in that field. They could just as well have called it "level 6" or "yellow", or whatever.
Then, you need to set a threshold that determines the momentto when it becomes mandatory to rebuild the bridge (unless you are willing to replace every piece of infrastructure as soon as it's built). From then on, either you follow the guidelines or you don't. That thing about "erring on the safe side" seems irrelevant to me.
Bridges are built to last for a praticular period of time...even if you build a new one, it too will only last a particular period of time...when bridges start collapsing because their age exceeds the expected life of the bridge, then we should talk...I'm always amazed at all the crying that goes on when tragedy like this happen...all of a sudden it's a Chicken Little thing...the dust hasn't even settled and people are looking for someone to blame and making knee-jerk plans and promises...money is not infinite...and if we all want to replace our bridges 50% into their life expectancy, then what other public services are you willing to forego?...for all we know this is an engineering issue or a construction issue...that is to say, the bridge would have collapsed under the conditions whether it was old or not...Of course, not too many people are willing to wait around for an answer...too fun to blame
[Edited by Fiji Joe] |
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| Riffhard |
I would love to say that I am shocked by what I just saw on CNN,but,alas,I have become all too accepting of CNN's insanely slanted and biased liberal leanings. This old fucktard Jack Cafferty is now claiming that the money that Bush(booooo,hiissssss) has spent in Iraq could have been used to save these people in Minniapolis from a faulty bridge!!! I shit you not! Less than 24 hours since the dust has settled the "blame it on Bush" smear tactics have begun in earnest on the "objective,real news,unlike Fox! Booooo,hiissss!" outlets!!
Let's us do a little thinking here,shall we? It seems that things in Iraq are going way way way better than the "objective,real news,unlike Fox! Booooo,hiissss!" outlets want us to know about. Every single general on the ground is saying the same thing. We are "winning" in Iraq! The surge "is having a dramatic affect" on turning things around in Iraq. Even the NYT had to come out and say that we are actually "making great strides" and that General Petraeus' plan is showing "remarkable success"!!
So now we have a perfect excuse for the DLM to slam Bush and Iraq! They must find a new angle because we are winning! They can't say that this thing is working now can they?! Hell no! So now they will do their level best to steer the masses of sheeple away from the fact that things are taking a decidely positive direction in Iraq. No,can't have that!! Let's use Iraq to bash Bush about a bridge in Minnisota that collapsed killing many innocent people. It's all Bush's fault!! Forget the fact that the bridge was the state's responsibility!!
It's so goddamned predictable that it's pathetic!! Yesterday Mark Levin said the exact same thing! He stated outright that the DLM would use this bridge tragedy to slam Bush about Iraq just like they did with Katrina!
"Just wait and see how the media spins this horrible tragedy in Minnisota. This will be their excuse to ignore all the good news coming out of Iraq,and it will be used as one more example of Bush's incompetance. Just wait! You'll see that I'm right!"-Mark Levin 8/1/07
Less than 24 hours later and Mr. Levin looks like goddamned Nostradamus! Not really. The DLM is just that easy to see through.
Yeah. The media's not biased,right? Sure!
Riffy |
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| glencar |
We don't call Levin "The Great One" for nothing. I read that NYTimes article & it was indeed a surprise. |
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| Fiji Joe |
The Hyatt Regency hotel walkway collapse was a major disaster that occurred on July 17, 1981 in Kansas City, Missouri, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others during a tea dance. At the time it was the deadliest structural collapse in U.S. history.
Does anyone else recall this event?
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| glencar |
Yes, it was on a Friday night, if I recall. |
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| Fiji Joe |
[quote]Riffhard wrote:
"Just wait and see how the media spins this horrible tragedy in Minnisota. This will be their excuse to ignore all the good news coming out of Iraq,and it will be used as one more example of Bush's incompetance. Just wait! You'll see that I'm right!"-Mark Levin 8/1/07
[quote]
I'm still waiting for people to blame SUVs...Me?...I blame China...and Russia |
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| robpop |
quote:
Fiji Joe wrote:
The Hyatt Regency hotel walkway collapse was a major disaster that occurred on July 17, 1981 in Kansas City, Missouri, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others during a tea dance. At the time it was the deadliest structural collapse in U.S. history.
Does anyone else recall this event?
I remember it very well. I believe the worst collapse before that was the "Silver Bridge" in West Virginia. I am guessing but I think 47 died.
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| pdog |
I'm waiting the standard 72 hours to pass blame on the people I blame for everything... |
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| robpop |
quote:
pdog wrote:
I'm waiting the standard 72 hours to pass blame on the people I blame for everything...
Good evening pdog. I am trying to find the Giants game. Do they play tonight? |
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| sirmoonie |
quote:
Riffhard wrote:
"Just wait and see how the media spins this horrible tragedy in Minnisota. This will be their excuse to ignore all the good news coming out of Iraq,and it will be used as one more example of Bush's incompetance. Just wait! You'll see that I'm right!"-Mark Levin 8/1/07
Less than 24 hours later and Mr. Levin looks like goddamned Nostradamus! Not really. The DLM is just that easy to see through.
That was his quote? Not sure who Mark Levin is (ZOG?), but its some kind of coincidence when one of the only two adults in the U.S. who doesn't know how to spell Minnesota is quoting the other one.
Less than 24 hours later and you're climbing the belltower over your imaginary DLM enemies, all somehow fucking tied to a deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis. No need to consult Nostradmaus ladies and gentlemen, even Quasimodo saw this nonsense coming. |
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| Fiji Joe |
quote:
pdog wrote:
I'm waiting the standard 72 hours to pass blame on the people I blame for everything...
Midgets? |
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| robpop |
quote:
Riffhard wrote:
Let's us do a little thinking here,shall we? It seems that things in Iraq are going way way way better than the "objective,real news,unlike Fox! Booooo,hiissss!" outlets want us to know about. Every single general on the ground is saying the same thing. We are "winning" in Iraq! The surge "is having a dramatic affect" on turning things around in Iraq. Even the NYT had to come out and say that we are actually "making great strides" and that General Petraeus' plan is showing "remarkable success"!!
Yeah. The media's not biased,right? Sure!
Riffy
Fox News told me that we won a few years ago.
[Edited by robpop] |
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| Riffhard |
quote:
sirmoonie wrote:
That was his quote? Not sure who Mark Levin is (ZOG?), but its some kind of coincidence when one of the only two adults in the U.S. who doesn't know how to spell Minnesota is quoting the other one.
Less than 24 hours later and you're climbing the belltower over your imaginary DLM enemies, all somehow fucking tied to a deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis. No need to consult Nostradmaus ladies and gentlemen, even Quasimodo saw this nonsense coming.
Well obviously Moonie I was quoting from memory,but he most assuredly did say it. You're certainly right about the Quasimodo reference though. Even he would have seen the fact that the very real Dirty Liberal Media would play this tragedy against Bush for all it's worth! Your hatered of him notwithstanding,they have proven Mark Levin 100% correct. He btw was the former COS to AG Edwin Meese in the Reagan Admin. He is also one of the leading constitutional lawyers in the country. His NYT best selling book Men In Black should be required reading for every judge in the nation!
As for the spelling of Minnesota,well,what can I say? I have to be only fair at something,right? I guess spelling will do.
Imaginary DLM!!! Goddamned that's rich!! ROTFLMFAO!! Your unabashed hatered of Bush has you believing that the media is not in total cahoots with the leftards of this country! Damn son! I thought you were a "real" conservative?! You hate Bush? Fine. Look at how the DLM portrayed the Supreme Court choices! Roberts was raked over the coals as was Alito. Jesus Moonie don't let your unhinged hatered of Bush blind you to the very real liberal bias in the press! Shit son even Reagan used to joke about it!
Levin says it,and the very next day CNN proves him right,and then you chime in and say that I have an imaginary enemy!! Like I said,too rich!
Riffy |
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| pdog |
quote:
Fiji Joe wrote:
Midgets?
Midget vegan lesbians in porn wearing viking helmets... |
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| mojoman |
glad the ro minnesoters are ok, i already have bridge fatigue though |
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| sirmoonie |
quote:
Riffhard wrote:
Well obviously Moonie I was quoting from memory,but he most assuredly did say it. You're certainly right about the Quasimodo reference though. Even he would have seen the fact that the very real Dirty Liberal Media would play this tragedy against Bush for all it's worth! Your hatered of him notwithstanding,they have proven Mark Levin 100% correct. He btw was the former COS to AG Edwin Meese in the Reagan Admin. He is also one of the leading constitutional lawyers in the country. His NYT best selling book Men In Black should be required reading for every judge in the nation!
As for the spelling of Minnesota,well,what can I say? I have to be only fair at something,right? I guess spelling will do.
Imaginary DLM!!! Goddamned that's rich!! ROTFLMFAO!! Your unabashed hatered of Bush has you believing that the media is not in total cahoots with the leftards of this country! Damn son! I thought you were a "real" conservative?! You hate Bush? Fine. Look at how the DLM portrayed the Supreme Court choices! Roberts was raked over the coals as was Alito. Jesus Moonie don't let your unhinged hatered of Bush blind you to the very real liberal bias in the press! Shit son even Reagan used to joke about it!
Levin says it,and the very next day CNN proves him right,and then you chime in and say that I have an imaginary enemy!! Like I said,too rich!
Riffy
To properly answer this balls-out idiocy, with all its inaccuracies, distractions, and hopeless fucking non-sequiturs, I would have to give a point by point reasonable answer (which, of course, I could - I have a big dick). But I refuse to disgrace this site, the Rolling Stones, my country, or my god the lord Jesus Christ above by giving one! And I'm a better man for it. |
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