Does anything happen without a reason?




I watched about the bridge collapse all night.

At first, it seemed that there was a kind of paralysis where nothing was happening.

The aerial photography began to take on the connotations of a still photograph.

Nothing was moving; nothing was happening except that tendrils of smoke continued to rise from the overturned truck...


where were the heros who would come to rescue those tossed into the seas? What about the others who were perhaps still stuck in their cars and floating downstream?

Was there any hope?

Or was this shaping up as a tragedy beyond any hint of redemption...

What good if they all arrived too late to help?

Was there going to be any kind of organized response.


well, i learned that things took time because nobody knew how secure the fallen bridge was.


would it slip again, further endangering the 'rescuers?'

Nobody seemed to know.


While I pondered these things, I also wondered if there was any connection between the bridge falling with anything else.

Could I play the Kevin Bacon game here....

Was there a form of six degrees of separation if only I could uncover the links?

Why did the bridge fail?

Was it because of poor maintenance?

For it is very seldom that a bridge collapses. I believe the last time it was due to the earthquake on the bridge connecting San Francisco to its northern counties....
And that was in the late eighties--nearly twenty years before...

Most bridges stay put.

But I suspect that has a lot to do with construction and maintenance.

In years past, in New York, many of the bridges had gone for many years without maintenance.

Eventually, engineering inspections revealed that action had to be taken on most of the bridges connecting the outer boroughs to Manhattan.

And it was done even though money had to be pulled from elsewhere to pay for it.

You see when the Federal government cut back, New York suffered.

I wonder if budget cut-backs have had something to do with the problems on the Minneapolis bridge.

Were inspections put off? Was maintenance put off until more money became avaiable? Or was I reading too much into it in my pursuit of the guilty party or parties.

Sometimes there are no guilty parties; sometimes things just happen...

But when it comes to bridges, there's a pretty good body of evidence to suggest that there's a reason behind a colllapse, whether it's external, an earth quake, improper maintenance....

Or was there some fundamental design flaw that had gone unseen all these years.

I am sure in the days, weeks and months ahead we shall learn much more....

But if it were I, and I were a Mayor or Governor, I would start looking into the last time I had my state or city bridges inspected.

And say a prayer for all those innocents who we lost this day and perhaps give thanks for those who did happen to survive.


Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon...