I'm sure you've all heard about this, since CNN and the national news have been running it as much as the local news around here has. I'm still kind of stunned, because this just isn't the kind of thing that happens close to home. It's always... somewhere else that stuff like this happens. But I suppose everybody feels like that, until something does happen in their neighborhood. Remarkably, the casuality rate seems to be quite low, considering. Many were injured and many are still missing, but I can only imagine what had happened if the bridge hadn't dropped the way it did.

For those that don't know the Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, the two are close enough together that they're basically a single city with 2 downtowns and 2 local governments. Add in a number of suburb towns that have grown into cities themselves, and you get a big, diffuse metro area. As I-35 comes North out of Iowa and approaches the Twin Cities, it splits into two parallel branches: 35E that runs though Saint Paul (the capital city and the one further East--also the one I live in) and 35W, which runs through Minneapolis (the bigger, more Westerly city), then the branches come back together on the North side of the Metro area. I-94 does something similar going East-West; 94 continues straight through both downtowns, while 494 branches to the South and 694 to the North, all meeting up again on the other side.

All these major freeways (and of course a bunch of smaller ones) form a kind of grid which should theoretically make getting around the Metro area pretty efficient, and the last time the roads were up-to-date (which I'd guess was somewhere around the mid-60's) it might have been. Now, though, its pitifully inadequate. Mass transit in MN is a joke (although not a funny one), so we have a lot of commuters in a lot of cars packed onto our roads. The one that has always seemed to get the highest load is 35W.

There are some complications beyond Governor Pawlenty's inability to lead his way out of a paper bag that our roads suck, though. The Mississippi flows right through the Twin Cities (as does the Minnesota before it joins the Mississippi), and both have deep river valleys around them. That means that pretty much anywhere you're going in the Twin Cities, you're probably going to have to cross a river. Especially if you're going to the University of Minnesota, which sits inside MPLS like Vatican City sits inside Rome. The campus itself straddles the river, with most of the buildings on the East bank and the West bank campus quite close to downtown. 35W cosses the river very near the U of M, and because of the layout of the area, is probably at just about its highest volume at that point.

This, of course, is where the collapse happened. I've seen the video of it falling coutless times on TV, but I still find myself gape-mouthed when I see it. I'm used to the sense of unreality that comes with watching a disaster on TV, but to have that feeling about a place you know--have driven over more times than you can count, simply because you never thought anything OF driving over it, is a whole different situation. Nobody I know seems to have been involved in the collapse--the closest I've found is that a co-worker of mine used to work with someone who died in the fall--but they easily could have been. Anybody I know could have been driving that stretch for a thousand different reasons. I was out near the U just a day before the collapse, watching a friend play a set to support his new CD, and probably half the audience had come over 35W.

As I said, it all could have been much worse. The section of bridge that fell into the river seems to have gone down mostly upright and in one piece. Many of the cars that were on the bridge when it fell are still on it, just 65ft lower than they were. If the bridge had crumbled as it fell, or tipped sideways or upside-down, I'm sure there would be considerably less survivors. How would it have felt, though, to just have the road drop out from underneath you like that? I keep trying to imagine it (especially as I drive over the river on my commute), but come up short.

Anyway, I'm OK, and as far as I know all my family and friends are, as well. I hope you'll all join me in wishing well for the survivors of the accident as well as for the families of those who did not survive or are still missing. This is something that will be with all of us who live in the Twin Cities for a very long time.