Five hours into the aftermath of the Minnesota 35W bridge collapse near downtown Minneapolis and tragically, but also miraculously, seven people have been confirmed dead of the hundreds who were treated for injuries.
How did this happen and why? These are questions the Minnesota Department of Transportation and National Transportation and Safety Board will be asked to answer. Meanwhile, Minneapolis faces two years of reconstruction of one of its primary arteries. The disruption is minor considering the lives lost, the injuries, the emotional trauma of sons and daughters, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas.
The heroic efforts of Minneapolis residents and those traveling on that 2,000-foot span of concrete and steel will become the story – has already become a large part of the recovery. It’s how we, as society, recover from tragedy. Who stepped up? Who came to help the 60 kids stranded on a school bus? Why did a team of a half dozen cyclists turn their bikes around when they heard the rumble and saw the dust rising? Whose lives did they touch? The nameless, unforgettable heroes who, with their own hands, risked their own lives and saved the lives of perfect strangers.
That’s where we find our wherewithal when we have to wake up in the morning following a tragic afternoon on a hot summer day and move forward with our lives. We look in the faces of our cubicle neighbors at work, the store owner downtown, and our next door neighbors at home and we see hope in humanity. Hope that just maybe that face will lend a hand and help another if and when that time arrives.
And that, my friends, is what makes America the land of the free and the home of the brave.
-end-
(c) ceg 2007
Land of 10,000 Perspectives 
That scene looked so dire.
Can you even imagine the horror of riding along in your car…minding your own business, then all of a sudden,without warning, the world LITERALLY falls out from under you! Could there be anything more horrific–unless, of course, you’re looking out the window of your 91st floor office window in NYC and you see a Boeing 757 barreling at you at 400 mph! It’s all so unbelievable.
Life is so precarious.
And finite.
LK
While the current focus is and should be on the human tragedy, it will be interesting to see if infrastructure neglect was the cause of this collapse. Was paying for the repair / replacement of this bridge the responsibility of the state or federal government? Could it be that a tiny sliver of the multiple billions of dollars spent so far on the destruction, reconstruction, and general boondoggling of Iraq should have been spent on this bridge? Regardless of whether state of federal government pays for the maintenance and repair of these things, just think of how much infrastructure right here in the “homeland” could be upgraded with just one month’s worth of the tax dollars (and debt) associated with Iraq.
LK: All the more reasons to live every day fully.
Balducci: I thought those very same words. The state is woefully behind on funding the transportation budget. The feds woefully behind and taking care of our own backyard issues.
From James Lileks:
“There’s nothing onto which people cannot project the narrowest, most reductive political agenda. Could be the internet; could be human nature. Perhaps in 1604 AD the sight of an ox cart upside down in the ditch inevitably led to an argument about the king. We’ll have the answers in the end, and we’ll know what could have been done. But sometimes Things Fall Down, and it’s a simple, and horrible, as that. “
Hey DT,
Thank you so much for including me in your daily inspiration. I am moved and touched.
The Frost quote that I read on your blog the other day served as part of the inspiration for “The Tao of Life’..that and the fact that my boyfriend broke up with me Wednesday.
Anyway, you’re now part of my daily literary constitutional and I welcome you into my world.
Best,
LK