Not to discount the tragedy of the Minnesota bridge collapse, but I was amused at the flurry of “Bridges in our area are safe” stories:
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
Louisville Courier Journal
Lafayette Journal and Courier
Muncie Star Press
Indianapolis Star
Evansville Courier Press
I swear, one of CNN’s twenty talking hairdos on the scene yesterday did a sidebar story on whether onlookers were hindering rescue efforts.
There is an article in today’s Courier-Journal indicating that our illustrious governor Ernie Fletcher is ordering the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to review bridge inspection records immediately and to make additional inspections on 38 Kentucky bridges that have been rated as structurally deficient. It’s a shame that it took the I-35W collapse in Minneapolis to wake the politicans up that our infrastructure is in need of a major overhaul. The Kennedy bridge carrying I-65 across the Ohio River here in Louisville is 44 years old, that bridge is named after JFK and was dedicated about two weeks after JFK’s assassination. Kentucky and Indiana officials have been trying to get an east end bridge built for at least 20 years to link I-265 aka The Gene Snyder Freeway in Kentucky with its counterpart I-265 in Indiana, linking travelers coming in from I-71 and I-64 to get to Jeffersonville and New Albany without having to navigate “Spaghetti Junction” in downtown Louisville to cross into Indiana to hook up with I-65 to go north to Indy or I-64 to go west to Evansville. Apparently feasibility studies have begun on the Kentucky side to get this project moving, but it will be years before the project is finished. As has been pointed out, the big question on this project and others is are these new bridge projects taking precedence over fixing the bridges we already have and how are we going to pay for them? On a related note, I don’t know if anyone remembers the Silver Bridge collapse in December 1967, I was nine years old then, I have vague memories of that. The Silver Bridge carried U.S. 35 over the Ohio River linking Kanauga, Ohio and Point Pleasant, West Virginia. That bridge collapsed during rush hour on a Friday night about two weeks before Christmas, I think about 46 people (can’t remember the exact number) lost their lives. Hauntingly that bridge collapsed the same year the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis opened and The Silver Bridge, having been built in 1928 was 39 years old at the time of its collapse, was a year younger than the I-35W bridge. I’m not an engineer, from what I’ve heard though, civil engineers across the country have been screaming for years that we have many unsafe bridges. On a more positive note though, the restore 64 project in downtown Louisville was completed a week ahead of schedule and was much needed. (I-64 in downtown Louisville is above ground and is next to the Belvedere Plaza, a downtown Louisville gathering spot with great views of the Ohio River.)