Six years ago (August 1, 2007), the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis — an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that handled 140,000 cars daily – collapsed during the evening rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring 145.
The NTSB cited a design flaw as the likely cause of the the catastrophic failure.
Last night, a section of a bridge along Interstate-5 in Washington State collapsed.
Here’s the good news and the bad news …
The good news: Only 3 people were dunked into the river and, according to Washington State Patrol, all were rescued and are in good condition.
The bad news: The incident will trigger calls for:
1) An end to the Sequester – which obviously caused the collapse, and…
2) A massive Federal spending program to fix bridges coast-to-coast … using only union labor, of course.
I say, have Bill Gates and his father pay for the reconstruction … cost will probably be less than they paid for ads to jack-up Washington’s state income tax rates.
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The Homa Files 
May 24, 2013 at 11:00 am |
I have often driven over the Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis, and was always surprised to hear that it was expected to collapse, due to its terrible and obvious condition. I was not surprised when it collapsed, only that it took a collapse to cause repair, and that it was repaired with union-only contractors resulting in outrageous cost-overs. Clearly we need infrastructure spending, but feel that closed shop agreements and not reasonable.