More Proaction and Less Reaction

The collapse of the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis has suddenly led to a strong reaction across the country with regard to ensuring that our nation's steel-deck truss bridges are safe for continued usage. The sudden revelation that the bridge had been deemed something akin to 'unsafe' in layman's terms was a shock to many but even more of a shock was the fact that there are literally hundreds more across the country that have been rated as such and now everyone and their brother is afraid of another bridge collapse. My father is a civil engineer and was talking to me about these situations. He mentioned that many a time reports such as these go unnoticed because it is very subjective.

What I mean by subjective is that while an assessment of the bridge may yield that it is not as structurally as safe as it should be, it is still within tolerances. Part of the problem in these cases is that many of the bridges around the country are not designed for the level of traffic that they now carry. For example, the old Wilson Bridge in Northern Virginia, long a bane to Maryland commuters into Virginia, was in terrible shape and finally it was replaced late last year by a newer span that was meant to be much more capable of carrying the amounts of traffic that cross it every day. It was also meant to reduce traffic in the area but that hasn't really happened. It just moved the bottlenecks a bit. But that's a different story and a different blog.

At that time, engineers had also explained to the public that the bridge was developing cracks and structural problems that could, over time, cause the bridge to collapse. At that time, the I-35 collapse hadn't occured so for the most of us, it was something we weren't even remotely concerned about. It's part of our being a largely reactive society. Now that a bridge has collapsed, suddenly everyone knows that there are 700 such bridges across the United States and the majority of them have been declared unsafe. Now everyone is calling for more money for road improvements. Our federal budgets, already starving for cash for various programs are now seeking emergency funding to promote revitalization of our nation's infrastructure. I guess the thinking is that we should 'show' that we're doing something about the problem although the problem has been there for a long time.

Most engineers will tell you that this revelation about the bridge is nothing new. They have seen such situations before and will undoubtedly continue to see such problems again. The sudden push at this point is more of a reaction to the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis. I mean you can see the signs of it everywhere. After the tragedy at the Sago Mines last year, a small majority of people directly affected by mining safety (mostly the miners themselves and their families) were up in arms about promoting mine safety. The public got caught up in it too and then over a short while the next crisis hit and it was left at the wayside. Now that a similar accident has happened in Utah, again there are calls for changes in mine safety standards. Why is it we need a shot in the arm every once in a while to get some sort of drive out of our society?

Remember Teri Schiavo? I'm sure for a lot of people, the name sounds familiar but they can't quite remember why. She was the patient down in Florida who had suffered a condition which left her in a vegetative state and her husband and her family were at odds about whether to leave her on life support or not. At that time almost the entire nation was pushing for new rules and regulations and people who had never taken any side on the issue were suddenly at the forefront behaving as if they were the ones who had been fighting for it from the beginning. After Schiavo passed away, the fervor died down. Now if you ask the average person who Teri Schiavo is you'll likely get the response, "I don't know."

It's sad but true that so many of us fall into the trap of what I call, 'crisis of the week (or two)'. In that case everyone suddenly grabs onto the one story that the media feeds us and we keep on it until the next crisis comes up. It's like a television drama where one crisis comes up and is dealt with for an hour until it's resolved or at least put aside and then the next week a new one crops up. If we stop and look at the bridges as just one example of places where we can take a proactive stance, we'll find many many more which could benefit from more proaction. It's impossible to handle all of them but if we as a society take a more even stance and hope for being more proactive, perhaps we can avoid the tragedies like the one in Minneapolis.