I'll go get my ax.

I hope the Viaduct survives at least from Aug 10-29, while the I-5 closure is happening.

Besides the DOT's suggestions to help mitigate gridlock by carpooling, using public transit, working a different schedule, etc., one of their suggestions is to take a vacation. Heeeee-he!

I was going home from downtown and there was a "thing" going on with cops and rescue workers (another shooting? another bomb scare?). When I got home, saw the news' pictures before hearing the newscast... I thought for a second it was the viaduct...

Pretty dead on with the title of the post.

God know there's no way to fix or maintain or rebuild infrastructure. The best we can hope for is to tear everything down and live in caves.

I'm in MN on vacation from Seattle and this is bad... the news is saying there could be 100 cars involved and a school bus of kids... I drove across that bridge yesterday... this is sketchy, Seattle clearly needs to fix the viaduct before this happens out west.

Commuters know the viaduct could come down in an earthquake, and they still chose to drive it. If it comes down and kill them, they will have chosen their fate.

I agree, ya go when ya go. Fate will play her hand when she is good and ready. I just hope none of my loved ones are on it when she lays those cards on the table.

$12B a month in Iraq. That's a lot of waterfront tunnels.

Shit, that's a lot of Puget Sound cleanup, a lot of hydrogen engine r&d, etc.

This will become more and more common as we deal with the fallout of the Reagan Revolution where we stopped investing in infrastructure over the last 30 years.

Our roads suck, buses are underfunded and overwhelmed, we have no true mass transit, and everywhere you look there is deferred maintenance.

You get what you pay for. Why do Republicans hate America so much?

There was a great picture as I walked by last night of a giant jack truck sitting on a variety of pallets and assorted wood holding the viaduct up by string and gum. The first thing that popped into my head was, "Man.. We sure need a new state of the art basketball arena"

No one ever wants to pay for this shit with their hard earned tax dollars. The whole country is in disrepair because no one thinks they're responsible for anything, including bridges, because increasingly we're a nation of hyper-individualistic assholes with no sense of the commons or shared responsibility. This won't be the last collapse.

fnarf,

we could tear it down and spend the money on something more effecient and beneficial

uhhh, minus an e... plus an i...

point is, is the viaduct really worth 3 billion dollars? or could a six lane boulevard and a light rail from crown hill to burien handle it?

Minnesota DOT says 200,000 cars a day use the bridge. should be interesting to see how this unfolds after the injured are taken care of.

Jesus. My condolences to anyone with family out there.

It's sad that in the Bush era I now no longer trust the government to do what is necessary in a time like this to help the populace, and to do what is necessary to prevent it from happening again - which is exactly the way right-wingers want it. They insist that government can't do anything right, and then go out of their way to prove it upon being elected.

Speaking as someone who used to live four blocks from that bridge, and drove over it *easily* 1000 times in 15 years, I'm shocked how things that our brains classify as "permanent" turn out to be just as transitory as everything else. My heart really goes out to all the folks who were just tryin' to get home... that's really all that any of us are ever trying to do, when you get down to it...

The Associated Press
Published: August 1, 2007

LUCKNOW, India: An overcrowded boat evacuating people from a flooded village capsized in a rain-swollen river in northern India on Wednesday, killing at least 28 people, officials said.

Stop the water taxi and the ferries.

Jay - I love infrastructure. I'm a civic guy. I accept my part of the overall responsibility. I want the stuff to work, be in good repair, and to be effective and useful, be it roads, bike lanes, pedestrian zones. I like bridges. I even like the Viaduct. Nothing fancy, but impressive in its own way - a weightlifter with legs planted and barbell pressed aloft. And, uh, way more efficient that ten fucking red lights.

Absolutely, unequivocally, and without a doubt; YES! We will “wait for this thing to fall down before we get around to taking it down”.

It will collapse, decay to sand and metamorphose back into stone before Seattle Liberals will be able to build the requisite (110%) consensus they require prior to taking any action (any action at all, ever.)

@16 - Democrats aren't any better (because they are either actually Conservatives, afraid of the "tax and spend" label, or a little bit of both).

Bush is an easy target, but the Clinton Administration didn't exactly invest in public works either. In fact, our government hasn't really done any massive infrastructure overhaul since the New Deal.

@20 - You are absolutely correct. The only way our elected officials can muster the political capital (or balls) to do anything constructive is by responding to a disaster. Planning ahead? That's alarmist thinking!

19: I'm not talking about the viaduct. A pro-viaduct person could say the same thing I said.

Me? I blame the Baby Boomers. Just wait. Across America our infrastructure is crumbling because the Baby Boomers didn't want to deal with it. They wanted lower taxes. Now we've got to face bridges that crumble and water pipes that are disintegrating. Here in Ann Arbor, our water rates our going up b/c of deferred maintenance. Throughout Michigan our bridges are crumbling and falling on commuters. America's falling apart.

God Bless America.

Oh, Jay, I know what you're talking about.

It'd probably be well on the way towards being taken down if the no-build option folks hadn't so successfully muddied the waters. Now the Seattle Process has taken hold and we'll be talking about what to do until it falls down.

I do want to say how awful this is. I just got an email from my mother-in-law saying that my brother-in-law, his wife, and my nephew are okay. They were heading towards the bridge when it collapsed. Good lord.

Insane.

There are a lot of things I miss about Seattle now that I'm back in Denver but all those aging bridges, especially the "Oh God please don't let there be an earthquake NOW" Alaskan Way Viaduct, are not among them.

There's a good compilation of info being updated as it comes in here:

http://minneapolis.metblogs.com/archives/2007/08/35w_bridge_coll.phtml#comments

holy fucking crap. that is a block from where i used to live. jesus. awful.

Who cares, this is serious flyover country. You don't actually drive through Minnesota, it's this nothing 35,000 feet below.

Is it too early to blame Al Quaeda?

Dan read my mind re: this post.

Add a picture of SR-520 while we're at it. I have this sick feeling 520 will go down before the viaduct.

...mfw beat me to it - and 520 is a better analogy, too, being over water and all.

I wouldn't get your knickers in a twist over the AWV being in imminent danger of collapse - it's rigorously inspected twice a year since the Nisqually Quake, and no credible engineer who has analyzed it thinks it's in danger of just spontaneously falling down tomorrow.

Of course, pictures of the I-5 Ship Canal or Aurora Bridges wouldn't have fit the editorial stance of the Stranger quite as much, now would they? I guess some chunks of waterfront property are more worth fearmongering over than others (which I suppose could explain the Stranger's apparent support for the Pacific Street Interchange)

I'll keep taking my chances on the AWV - which has stood through two of Seattle's regular 30-year 6.5-6.7 level seismic events - and which credible engineers say will likely be rendered unusable (ie - NOT collapse) in the next one.

But yes, to get back on topic, we SHOULD maintain our infrastructure - which is why it is so obscene that RTID has hundreds of millions of dollars for Hallivulcan/Allen/Nickel's two-way Mercer/Lowered Aurora landscaping scheme and nothing for the Magnolia Bridge, the Rizal Bridge, the 16th Ave S. Bridge, or a bunch of other less glamorous but more essential projects.

To put a finer point on it, it's also truly shameful that so many general fund dollars that the public had no say on (but that both Democrats and Republicans were perfectly happy to hand over) were diverted to building new overpasses for our two new stadia and we get to raise our effing sales taxes to pay for basic maintenance.

Now THAT'S obscene.

@31: Are you fucking serious? The twin cities alone have around 660,000 people, not to mention the thousands living in residing suburbs. Get your head out of your ass, the Midwest is not just a giant stretch of cornfields.

The interstate highway system was conceived during the 50's by Republicans, when they were simply greedy, but otherwise normal. That is to say, before they got all religious on us. Tax rates were high, and we could do stuff like this.

The President Retard got elected in 1980, and he rallied the other retards with a message that only a retard could believe: The government was bad and industry was good. So we got all self-righteous about taxes, and that made stuff like this suffer from neglect.

Thankfully, President Retard is dead now, but his legacy lives on, in shit like this. Luckily, there are less retarded every time something like this happens.

Lesson: Only Retards are Republicans

A big "fuck you" to the 'who cares?' comment above. Only those who have never been to Minneapolis consider it hickville. And many, many people care considering how many were killed/injured (7 killed, nearly 40 injured, over 20 missing). It's hard to look at an image of a school bus that was carrying 60 children on a collapsed bridge and say 'who cares?'.

This is a one day tragedy in Minneapolis. It\'s horrible but keep it in perspective. Today 70 Iraqi civilians were blown to pieces by a single car bomb. More will be killed tomorrow and every day for the foreseeable future. They are dead because of the war that Bush started with the enthusiastic support of Dan Savage.

Excerpt from \"Say Yes To War\" by Dan Savage October 2002

\"In the meantime, invading and rebuilding Iraq will not only free the Iraqi people, it will also make the Saudis aware of the consequences they face if they continue to oppress their own people while exporting terrorism and terrorists. The War on Iraq will make it clear to our friends and enemies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we mean business: Free your people, reform your societies, liberalize, and democratize... or we\'re going to come over there, remove you from power, free your people, and reform your societies for ourselves\"

(July 2007 Bush wants to sell the Saudis $20 billion in new weapons)

Nice work taking a deadly accident and using it to grind your own axes, folks. Irrelevant as they are, I'm sure the people of Minnesota are now properly outraged about the Seattle viaduct and the evil of Republicans.

CG, thank you for speaking for the Retarded among us. They deserve a voice other than FOX. President Retard would be proud of you, if he weren't dead.

Oh, wait a minute. I forgot we have a new retard in the oval office. Undoubtedly He's very proud of you CG.

Hey, while were all grieving, let\'s take a few moments to grieve for the 400,000 Americans the tobacco industry kills every year. And let\'s pause for a moment to consider how the tobacco industry attracts new victims to addict and poison. One way is to advertise in \"hip\" publications like The Stranger that target the 14 to 22 market.

@38, if you feel the burning need to keep posting about Dan's support of the war in any and all threads, could you at least not appropriate my name?

I like to think that one of the small but tangible reasons that discourse on slog is more enlightening than most blogs is because people generally don't appropriate each other's handles. If you do care about this board (which you must, since you keep posting month after month), kindly do your part to keep it workable. Thanks.

-The Real Big Sven

@31: care about Mpls/StP because it's a similarly sized metro, similarly liberal (first muslim US Representative) with residents similarly fired up about art, social justice, and the good life. The story could just as easily have been us with a lahar. Or us with a midsized earthquake. Or us w/ a tsunami.

I know as a former Minnesotan I should respond to your troll with a flame. But as I think of all my friends that regularly use the I-35W bridge, that I could have lost in an instant, I'm finding that for just one night I'm giving myself a pass from being snarky and ironic.

My fiance's family is in Minnesota. Thankfully, they were not on that bridge.

I'm sad for the people who died and their friends and family.

Mpls/StP is also less white than us!

The "Original Fnarf" posting above is not original anything, and certainly not original Fnarf. I am Fnarf. There's only the one.

Back in the real world, they're saying seven dead in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and 60 injured. 50 vehicles went into the water, so the death toll will certainly grow. The bridge was being repaired, which means a whole lot of lawsuits are being kindled as I type this.

You know how tobacco industry gets new users? Because people are dumb as fuck. If it weren't for the fact that they muddy up my air with their filthy mess, I'd be all pro-big-tobacco for sheer Darwinist reasons.

Anyone born after 1980 that picks up smoking and is surprised at the emphysema they get is too stupid to concern me.

And yes, back in the real world the city/repair workers are going to be hit with millions of dollars in lawsuits. I'm not sure if this is exactly the right thing to be doing here. Where is the money to rebuild this thing going to come from? Are the winners of the lawsuits just going to get taxed over the next god-knows-how-long to pay for it?

I'd just as soon everyone bike everywhere and use light rail/real trains for everything else.

Man, I used to live by there too. It's so surreal. I went over that bridge plenty of times.

This tragedy is a great example of why we need redundancy in transportation. The commute is going to royally suck for the next year or so in Minneapolis - and it wasn't a dream before this, either.

If nothing else, it's a graphic and ghoulish lesson on how it costs MONEY to run a society, and how infrastructure - while unsexy - must be maintained. Both rich and poor were on the bridge when that thing collapsed, and I doubt they were thinking about how much money they had saved on taxes over the years when the thing went down.

"Is it too early to blame Al Quaeda?"

I made the ol' lady turn off the TV when I heard from the other room that Hannity started talking about 'terrorists'. What an f'in douchebag!

Al Qaeda: Lets blow up america, where should we start?
Al Qaeda 2: mmm, we already hit the financial center of the world, lets hit a bridge in MN next!
Hannity (in the same room cuz he's a douchebag): I'll start spreading the word for you on my 'news' program

@49: The workers probably won't be sued -- they're generally considered to have immunity when acting in an official capacity. The government agency responsible for maintaining the bridge (I'm not sure if that's the City of Minneapolis or Minnesota DOT, since it's an interstate) will probably get sued, however.

I'm really curious what the cause of the collapse will turn out to be.

It's a sad commentary that when I heard of this collapse, the first thing I thought was, "Great, now the Stranger's going to use it to further their surface/transit agenda." You bunch of opportunistic assholes.

I'm with Matt on this. It's the boomers. They all grew up in an era when high tax rates built and funded the schools, the research, the advancement of this country. Once they came through they started the tax cut revolution.

See everyone out there only sees what the government gives the other guy, never what they get from the government.

These boomers have legislated for themselves massive government entitlements AND massive tax cuts AND have ordered up a very, very expensive war. And they are going to leave a very ruined country in their wake.

Yeah, a span over water with no supports for 450 feet is a good analogue for a viaduct that is completely over land and is supported every 100 feet. FUD much?

The times has an interesting article about the aging infrastructure in this country and other threaths posed in the near future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/us/01cnd-engineer.html?hp

Gomez must think that the Times is a bunch of opportunistic assholes now for pushing their own agenda after hearing of this tragedy.

What's wrong with "exploiting" tragedies to make improvements. I've never believed in the idea that pushing for changes after a tragic event qualifies as exploitation anyway. In an ideal society, tragedies would be the source of tremendous debate and about why and how things are done. Are people supposed to have a cry and wear all black for 6 months before I address pressing concerns? It's like all the dinks after 9/11 who refused to talk about the issues involved because it was oh so tragic! Sorry, but 9/11 wasn't above discussion. Or the people who claim that gun control advocates "exploited" the McBeef rampage. Sorry, but that's exactly the right time to talk about the issues involved. And yes, the bridge collapsing in Minneapolis should be a wakeup call to Seattleites since the viaduct showed wear and tear after the earthquake.

I'm from MN. I work in Minneapolis and can see the collapsed bridge from the window of my workplace. My roommate was one of the scuba divers doing recovery work these last two nights.

And my perspective on this is that yes, you should use events like this as wake-up calls to improve situations in your area. Sadly, though, more people are interested in complaining and placing blame than in looking at realities of the problem. Ultimately, I think we might just be afraid to look at the problem because it might lead us to the conclusion that sometimes, things like this just happen.

I am from Minneapolis, not that it gives my opinion any more weight, but I can say what some Minnesotans are thinking.

We are furious that billions are spent on a war with an ever rising death toll, yet we aren't safer at home. In fact the greatest risk we have, is our governments apathy toward the lives of its citizens. If the money was spent on infrastructure, it wouldn't be slipping into the pockets of the president's friends.

We are also mad that we are building not one but two stadiums, but we aren't making sure our bridges are in good repair. The people voted down a new baseball stadium 4 times, but finally, our legislaters simply spent the money, saying that the voters were "Too short sighted" to be given a say.

Lately, I laughed when people called our country the leader of the free world. But now it makes me angry that a weak dollar, a corrupt president, and a failing economy and infrastructure can't embrace reality.

I live in Minneapolis, and my former apartment building can be seen in some of the photos of the collapse. The traffic noise from 35W used to keep me up at night, but the view of the bridge after dark from my bedroom window was breathtaking. I totally agree with Someguy... fuck bush... and fuck the republican national convention that will be invading our beautiful, blue city like a slap in the face after our fall. Did anyone else watch Bush's press release on the bridge collapse where he essentially said, "too bad, so sad" for a minute and then slid into how horrible the democrats in congress are for not funding the war? Republican or democrat, everyone should have found that inappropriate and in poor taste. Laura was here today to console us, and W is coming tomorrow... wow... I didn't think this could get any worse- until I joined a 35W disaster facebook group and the only thing these assholes can talk about is how God's wrath made the bridge fall and how the people who died did not repent... No wonder I am moving to New Zealand.

That's not old. These are old.

That... *thing* in Seattle is in its own right, downright fugly though, which is plenty reason to blow it up.

So - as a civil engineer that has worked in the city. STAY OFF IT! If the earthquake happens while you're stuck you're a sandwich. You won't need an ax. And yes, the earthquke will happen. Any minute now. Those who know take surface streets.

Laurelgardner,
Is she the blond that did the short TV interview? If so, send my heartfelt admiration and thanks.

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