We got home last night and I checked my mail noticing a crisis notification from Metroblogging, regarding Metblogs Minneapolis [LiveBlog][LiveFootage]. We flipped on the news and saw what had transpired that evening.
The major bridge collapsed during rush-hour traffic shortly after 6:50 p.m. CT Wednesday, sending more than 50 cars plunging 20 metres into the Mississippi River.
The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, was in the midst of being repaired, and two lanes in each direction were closed when the bridge buckled and broke into several massive sections that fell into the water below. [CBC]
We had just been talking about Minneapolis at dinner with Henry, who is originally from Vancouver and now lives in Chile. He’s been following my blog for a while and we decided to meet up while he was in town.
A school bus that dangled precariously on the edge of one of the broken concrete slabs was carrying about 60 children, but all inside the bus managed to escape when an adult in the vehicle kicked open the back door, according to witnesses and survivors.
Others reported seeing bystanders diving into the water and repeatedly attempting to help people trapped in their submerged vehicles. [CBC]
Watching the news again this morning they had a family on TV, their mother was missing. Her husband said he didn’t want to release a photo of her because she never liked how she looked in pictures so they wanted to respect that. She is a wife, mother and only child – her father lost her mother earlier this year so he was also pretty distraught. The missing woman’s daughter said you have to tell people how much you love them every day. This almost brought me to tears… then I felt like a jerk, for many reasons.
It seems like it always takes a tragic event to get people to react. This is a sad situation but there are every-day events all around the world that should also affect us this much, as humans. Flooding, famine, hurricanes, earthquakes… …missing women & men, missing children. What the daughter of the missing woman said in the interview struck home – even though it sounds cliche it truly is important to let those you love, know they are loved.
At a press conference this morning the NTSB chairman was saying there at 70,000 bridges in all of the USA that were ranked the same as the bridge that fell: ‘structurally deficient’. There’s a database of structurally deficient bridges by state and highway that you can peruse and get a little paranoid over. I have to say that ‘terrorism’ not being mentioned or blamed in this case is a bit of a relief, but it also make me wonder about structural integrity of some places around Vancouver even.
I’ve had a bit of a series on the Pattullo over on Metblogs [1][2][3], but most of its issues arise from poor driving conditions, excessive speed and a poor layout for a 70-year-old bridge that handles so much traffic. I’m not going on a witch hunt by any means, but tragedies like this make you evaluate lots of things. How safe are our bridges or our buildings [Top10CrashSites]? There’s something to be said for public safety. You can browse the Ministy of Transportation website for most recent upgrades and construction, although this is just helpful in the case of tracking costs and road closures.
If you are in the Twin Cities area, Metblogs is providing great coverage and information including alternate routes for commuters, drivers and traffic pattern changes [TrafficChanges]. Thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the rescue workers.
Everyone who has pledged for the Blogathon please be advised that the Surrey Food Bank online donation page is currently down. They have sent me an email to explain and to advise you to call in your donation (local: 604-581-5443 or they said if you are calling from out of town, call collect).
Disaster in Food Bank Land….our on-line donation site is not working and our IT guy is on vacation. So anybody who has gone on line and made their donation, has not been able to be processed. We have not put a message on that web page advising people to phone their donation in to our office.
If [pledges] have already tried to make their donation on line, please let them know they will have to call in to our office, as it will not be processed.
I’ll put out another notice if/when I get word that the donation site is back up. Thanks so much for you donations and we truly regret making this a little more difficult for you to donate. Should you have any questions, please fire me a comment. Thanks!
In honour of Keira heading to her hometown today on Vancouver Island (and Alanah who we want to import for the hockey season) I thought I would post about this little tid bit that we should all be proud of.
Travel + Leisure’s 2007 readers survey identified Vancouver Island as the best island in Canada and the continental U.S. That puts us on a par with such exceptional island destinations as Maui, Kauai, Galapagos and Bali. [Nanaimo Bulletin]
It gets even better, over on the official Travel + Leisure website in their ‘best of 2007‘ section you can see their selection for world’s best island destinations, and Van Isle comes in at #6, beating out Phuket, Thailand and Hawaii. Wowsa.
As Vancouver is usually the top-ranked place in these parts it’s nice to see the Island getting some recognition. Hiking, forests, history, beaches as far as the eye and see, surfing, snowboarding, fishing… the list goes on and on. I find the Island represents what Vancouver used to be all about before we got a little too wrapped up in the hype of being on the world’s stage. It’s not plastic, it’s not pretentious, and it is world class.
Over the next week there are a couple of events happening mid-Island that Keira will be covering on her blog, such as the Filberg Festival and an international bike competition at Mount Washington. Safe travels hot stuff!
I never log into my hotmail account anymore, not even through MSN messenger (after getting gmail 3 years ago, really). Since getting a Mac I just use Adium as my chat client at home and at work I log in through web-based Meebo. Apparently it’s been a while since I actually checked my hotmail email because I went to do so today and my account was shut down.
I mean, no one sends me hotmail anymore except maybe an old friend from over 2 years ago that doesn’t know I have a gmail account or something. So I go to log into my hotmail and it tells me that “this account has been reserved for you!”. I re-activate it and log into my inbox. My personal folders are all there still but everything is gone. It purged my past, cleaned my slate and I just don’t ever want to log into that service anymore… ever. I have emails from my sister that she sent when I was in Boston, my niece’s 1st birthday invitation, my mom’s first ever email to me, and just a huge archive of ghosts and memories from my past. But it’s okay hotmail, I’m over you and you’re 90s ways. I don’t need your email archives. I have photos and memories and real people to remind me of things. So there.
Side note, my butt was in the LAist today. We were taking the photo above while it was taken… from behind.
As an added incentive for pledging my Blogathon efforts for the Surrey Food Bank from Saturday to Sunday, I decided to give away some tickets to the Vancouver Canadians game on August 4th (Mexico Night!) Watch the YouTube video below to see whose name was picked from the hat. Thanks again everyone!
*Also, you can still pledge for Blogathon until July 31st – if you have or do pledge in the post-Blogathon days, I have a secondary prize to give away, which I’ll draw for on Wednesday August 1st*
