Faulty Design
With the 35W Bridge collapse happening in the University of Minnesota’s backyard it’s hard to ignore the impact of a tragedy that could have been prevented.
I remember being paranoid for a while after hearing about and seeing the aftermath of a tragic social design issue that ended in a way no one ever would have imagined. One of the biggest questions that circulated conversations around the world was the question of how this could have been prevented. Why does it take a tragedy like this to open peoples’ eyes to the danger that surrounds countless numbers of people every day? A Minnesota bridge warning was issued in 1990 indicating what bridges throughout Minnesota posed threats to the people that used them; the 35W Bridge being one of them. Why wasn’t anything done? What other priorities take precedence over faulty bridges that take more than fifteen years to solve?
With a warning that the bridge was “structurally deficient� in 1990, only patchwork fixes were administered to the faulty steel arch deck truss bridge. It was like putting a band-aid on a broken bone and hoping for the best.
It’s time to do something about the countless number of bridges that need repairs. There are currently 756 bridges throughout the US with the same structure as the 35W Bridge. It should become a priority that they are all checked, along with every other bridge that stands, to make sure that they are still in working condition. If there is even one problem with any part of any bridge, fixes should be administered so that negative consequences do not arise. We need to learn from our mistakes.
Immediately preceding the collapse of the 35W Bridge, many other states jumped into action demonstrating the kind of response we need throughout the entire US. Iowa Governor Chet Culver ordered a state wide bridge inspection while the governors of Illinois and Arizona ordered the inspection of bridges that were said to be “critical.�
Response from the federal government has contributed a helping hand in the re-building effort of the 35W Bridge and in the effort to prevent another tragedy such as this to happen again. $5 million has been pledged in federal funds to help with the clean up effort that has been taking place since the bridge’s collapse. The money is meant to be used for the restoration of traffic flow, the clearing of debris, and the re-building of the bridge.
"We in the federal government must respond and respond robustly to help the people there not only recover, but to make sure that lifeline of activity, that bridge, gets rebuilt as quickly as possible," President Bush said Thursday after meeting with Cabinet officials.
It’s great to know that there is so much support after such an unthinkable tragedy, but the real issue that needs to be addressed is the question of what needs to be done to prevent this, one hundred percent, from happening again in the future. With 140,000 people that used the 35W Bridge each day, we must find a way to insure the safety of every single person in the US as they travel on any one of the many bridges with an unsatisfactory rating. Nothing is more important than life itself.
Information collected from:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-02-minneapolis-bridge_N.htm