In a catastrophe that will transform the City of Minneapolis for the foreseeable future, the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River has collapsed. Miraculously (considering over 200,000 cars pass over the structure daily), only six people have been confirmed at the time I type - a mere four hours after the horrific incident.
In spite of myself, I had the local news on for at least a couple of hours. And as my view of television news coverage, local or otherwise, is mainly shaped by those few times I tune in following a disaster (lets see...that would make only 9/11 and...this), I can't help but to see it as generally lecherous, inane, mindlessly repetitive, and dumbed down to the absolute lowest denominator. My educated guess, however, is that these characteristics are not limited to disaster coverage; regardless of how bent over the barrel they are to fill hours during those times.
Nevertheless, there I was - unable to totally divorce myself from the slowly developing proceedings; the interviews with DOT folks, elected officials, & eyewitnesses. Subjective phrasing and ridiculous prattle that would make the patron saint of journalism roll over in his grave. But it's my city they're talking about, and I had no other option for feeling somehow connected to this internationally significant disaster (I saw it as the lead story on BBC.com), unfolding a mere six miles from my house. The sudden, total loss of a bridge that I crossed nearly every day for my first four years of living in the city; and over which a number of my readers (that number being two) visited me on trips from out of state to stay at Johnson Street.
Holy fucking shit.
On a side note of seemingly lesser significance (though we'll see how insignificant it seems to the community as early as, say, tomorrow morning): traffic is going to suck balls.
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6 comments:
Good to hear you and your family are okay. I was beginning to wonder. For me, this marks the first significant disaster that occured in which people I know well live close by. You and your family and my stepsister and her family live relatively close; she reported that she crossed the bridge a half-hour before this happened.
Well, to put things in perspective: there's about three to four million people in the metro area, so a lot of people are OK.
I last crossed that bridge for a chess match about three months ago. But about your stepsister crossing the bridge a half hour before this happened: HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
Holy fucking shit indeed.
Our local New England Cable News (we no longer have CNN or its ilk) was showing the coverage from both KSTP and KMSP and what struck me was that on KMSP they observantly noted that some really shitty weather was coming through the area, and they had the radar up. But, being the modern age it is, this wasn't any old radar, this was TITAN 3D(tm) weather radar and they made sure to remind you of that fact every 30 seconds or so. This despite the fact that it looked EXACTLY like every weather radar since about 1976.
I'm glad to learn you and yours are ok, as are Faith's family. Her dad was on 94 just south of there when the collapse happened, though he too learned of the collapse from the BBC - after he got home.
In a related note, my cousin was in the PATH commuter rail station (under the WTC) on 911, about an hour before the first plane hit. That too inspired a few Holy Fucking Shits.
So, we were watching the news overage...and I got out my laptop (this was 7:30CDT) and brought up Google Earth so I could be sure I remembered where the bridge was. On the image of the bridge in Google Earth was an icon linking to Wikipedia, which had already been updated with as much current information as the news I was watching.
Also weird, if you look at one of the oblique (3D) views in Google Earth you'll see that most of downtown Minneapolis has been modeled. In addition, the river gorge has also been portrayed in 3d. The bridge has not, and so it appears to run down the side of the gorge into the river, looking freakily like the collapsed bridge.
I wonder if they'll update Google Earth to include the new image. They did this for New Orleans, but then took the pictures down abruptly.
Weird.
The difference between NPR/MPR coverage and local network coverage is mind-blowing.
The five North-South routes for the entire city have to bear an additional 125,000 cars each rush hour, so I took the bus this morning. My bike was at work due to an odd commuting arrangement earlier in the week, so I'll take that home.
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