A Twin Cities Social Design Issue
All right, I admit it, this is taking the easy way out. But I thought and thought and for the life of me could not think of any other social design issue that affects the twin cities more than this. Perhaps you remember the US highway bridge that in August collapsed into the Mississippi River without reason. Only last month was a conclusion drawn about what happened.
Investigators found a design flaw in the US highway bridge that collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. Steel plates that held the bridge's beams together at eight of its 112 joints were too thin, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said. When the wreckage was recovered, investigators found that those plates had broken, the report said.
And that is a major problem, there needs to be better surveillance of what material goes into making our bridges and buildings, so nothing like this ever happens again. Had more time and more effort gone into building the bridge in the first place, no one would have needlessly died. Luckily, I'm not alone in my outrage, the agency urged highway authorities to check all major steel- truss highway bridges in the country, though it emphasized there was no evidence of a similar problem in other spans.
(A photo of the destruction)