Fellow Minnesotans! We Made it to a Time Top Ten List!

Posted by Greg Laden on December 10, 2007
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We’re Number Five for the Bridge Collapse:
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Bridges failed this year in China and in Guinea, killing 64 and 70 people, respectively. But the disaster that really grabbed U.S. headlines was the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis on August 1, where the death toll reached only 9.


I was in the Kalahari when the bridge fell. I heard about it this way:

“Oh, did you hear that the bridge in Minnesota fell down yesterday?”

(they don’t have a lot of bridges in South Africa. That would require rivers..)

“Which bridge?” I asked.

Next day: “Oh, I found out, it was the bridge over the Mississippi River.”

… this went on for a while, until we finally got to a phone and called Amanda’s step-Mom, who always knows a lot of stuff. She filled us in.

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  1. #1 Dave Briggs
    December 10, 2007

    My Mother and step Father live in Minneapolis so I paid close attention to it too. Just to try to look for a silver lining I heard they have stepped up the Nation’s inspections.
    I saw a bridge on the California Pacific Coast Highway that they constructed out of stainless steel! They even had ancillary anticorrosion measures as well.
    Maybe all this will lead to research in better construction materials. It would seem there might be some way to use carbon fiber in construction?
    Dave Briggs :~)