August 2, 2007 Archives

A bunch of us at work were getting ready to head to dinner when we caught the chopper video from Minneapolis. It was difficult to fathom at first. One picture couldn't tell the story. You needed wide shots and close-ups to understand the magnitude of the situation.

How could the Interstate just fall down like that?

I counted the individual structures down and said to myself, "terrorism." How could it be anything but?

First impressions can be so misleading.

I listened carefully as I scanned the cable channels covering the story live. No one was talking terrorism. That's good. It would have been foolhardy to poison the story with speculation. We're already on edge enough.

The more I looked, the more I realized I'd seen this before. Mianus, San Fransisco, the highway overpasses near the Northridge quake in California - Highways fall down! They shouldn't. They still do.

Then I thought about that school bus - just a few feet from the edge. What must have gone through that driver's mind as the roadway beneath his bus began to violently heave?

Over the next few weeks the backstory to this tragedy will dribble out. I can almost guarantee there were signs missed or procedures not followed. There always are.