35W

We're now five days on after the collapse of the 35W bridge over the Mississippi River. There's a lot of work to be done in surveying the site, removing the debris and most of all recovering the victims who remain trapped underneath tons of concrete and the murky waters. There's no doubt that this has been a traumatic time around here, but I sense that we won't be wallowing in the event too much longer. There's simply too much work to be done and Minnesotans aren't generally in the habit of indulging self-pity.

We went downtown on Saturday to see the Twins game, but our trip was fairly circuitous, so we didn't get very close the bridge itself. Since it was a weekend, it wasn't especially difficult to get around the downtown area. We decided to avoid the 3rd Avenue bridge, which is the closest to 35W, instead choosing to go about 1/2 mile further to the west to use the Hennepin Avenue bridge. That worked very well and it is very easy for us to take East Hennepin over to Stinson Boulevard, then snake our way through the industrial areas of Nordeast back to Highway 88 and home. This is a workable trip under normal circumstances; when I used to work downtown and had to drive, I would often take this path to get home, especially if the traffic reports for 35W were not promising, and they often weren't. One of the advantages of living where we do is that it is pretty easy to get most places in the Twin Cities; although New Brighton is technically a St. Paul suburb, we live only 2 miles from the edge of Nordeast. Although we'll have to see how things develop, the immediate impact of the bridge collapse has not been that onerous for us personally; it's quite possible that many of us who relied on the bridge will be able to figure out ways to minimize the impact.

We've only seen glimpses thus far, but it's inevitable that the long knives will be coming out about this matter. Personally I don't think it makes any sense to blame anyone for what was clearly a multi-factorial disaster, but there have already been some calls for the head of Carol Molnau, who runs MnDOT. Not surprisingly, the calls have come from the hyperpartisans among us, like the ever-frothing StarTribune columnist Nick Coleman. But I don't think Molnau will ultimately take a bullet on this; while there are reasons to wonder about the bridge inspection program, most of the people who have been complaining loudest about it are people like me, i.e., people with no particular expertise on bridges and/or structural engineering. My guess is that once the investigations run their course, it will turn out that no one factor was decisive in what happened. Sometimes people do the right thing and the result is still terrible.

One thing that unfortunately hasn't surprised me is that many of the victims are neighbors of ours, including two people from neighboring Mounds View and another from my former town of Shoreview. 35W is best known as the main path to the southern suburbs, but those who cross the bridge are, in the main, headed for the staid enclaves of northwestern Ramsey County. There are a lot of us who live up this way and generally the communities we live in are not especially newsworthy; my town is most noteworthy for its complete lack of noteworthiness. Most of us live quiet lives, filled with church picnics, Little League games and neighborhood parades where the dignitaries throw fistfuls of candy to the kids along the route. Those routines won't change much, I think - the kids got enough candy from the St. Anthony parade on Friday that their haul rivaled what they get at Halloween. Life goes on.

The media bigfoots are leaving town now; W was here, but he's gone on to other matters as well. While it may not be normal for a long time, we'll adjust. We're Minnesotans. That's what we do.