The 35W Bridge Collapse - How a Broken Bridge Brought Us Home
The tragic collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis showed just what it means to be a Minnesotan and affirmed this writer's decision to make Minnesota her home.
"Good. You're answering your phone. That means you're okay." "I just saw it on the news! Are you two all right?" "I know it sounds silly, but I just called to make sure you're all safe." Those are just a sample of the calls that flooded my phone lines in the first twenty-four hours after the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Our friends and family felt they had good cause to worry: we had moved to the suburbs outside Minneapolis mere weeks before. They knew that my husband's new job was in downtown Minneapolis, but, not being familiar with the area, all they knew was that a major bridge out of the city had collapsed, and we were close enough to have been on the bridge when it happened. It was their worst fears coming to life on their local news stations.
In truth, my husband never takes 35W in or out of the city, as our suburb lies along a different route. As a family, we had, in fact, driven across that bridge only once: we had brought our young children to Minneapolis this past spring on a fact-finding mission, to see if we would all want to make Minnesota our new home. But even after being reassured of our well-being, our families' voices still sounded shaky across those phone lines.
Unlike many families, our family did not relocate out of necessity: we relocated out of choice. We were ready for a change of scenery, for a different pace, and we were looking for a really good place to raise our family. "Minnesota? Why Minnesota?" Our friends and families were stumped as to why we would choose to move to such a cold state (a fact we have yet to verify personally, moving as we did at the beginning of an extremely hot summer).
We tried, in vain, to explain to them the beauty we saw in the wetlands, the rolling hills, the craggy bluffs. We talked until we were blue in the face about the great schools and park districts, the easy proximity to a thriving, vibrant downtown. Minnesota's moniker, "Land of 10,000 Lakes" (although it feels as though there are many more than that) failed to move them. We described the big sky, the beautiful sunsets, how excited we were to have seen foxes and pheasants and cranes all around our new home. They still could not understand. And then, the bridge collapsed.
For our relatives, it would have been easy to pull a "We told you so", to have railed at us "I knew you should never have moved there! Bridges collapsing! What kind of state is that to live in?" But the sad fact is that, as so many news reports are showing, bridges all over the country (and the world, if China is any indication) are in states of functional deficiency. Minnesota is not alone in this. A disaster of this nature could have happened anywhere, but it happened here.
Has such a tragedy changed our feelings about our newly adopted home state? Not at all. In fact, what we saw on the news and read in our local papers only reinforced our feeling that we had made the right decision on where to raise our family, because one thing that came shining out of this tragedy was what it means to be a Minnesotan. It was in the way that Minnesotans rushed to the scene to help each other. It was the way in which the local Red Cross put notices in the papers within a couple of days of the collapse that they had already received enough donations to deal with this crisis and asking kind-hearted donors to please direct their donations to a general Red Cross fund instead. It was in watching the news this morning and seeing that the Minnesota Department of Transportation was already unveiling its preliminary plans for rebuilding the bridge. (That kind of turnaround would be unthinkable in some large cities.) It was in the way that Dunwoody College of Technology offered full tuition to Jeremy Hernandez, the young man credited with helping children escape from the school bus that fell in the collapse. Minnesotans were all pulling together to pick up the pieces and help those in need in a way that made us marvel, in a way that made us proud of our decision to become Minnesotans ourselves.
When my husband's parents came for their first visit this weekend, they specifically asked to see the bridge. I hesitated: it felt intrusive, ghoulish. Being good hosts, however, we accommodated their request, driving down to the Old Stone Arch Bridge and walking slowly along its length. With every step we took closer to where one could see the jagged section of bridge jutting up from the river, my heart grew heavier. It is impossible to describe how different it was to see it in front of me, as opposed to on a television screen or in a picture. Halfway across the bridge, my daughter stopped abruptly and pointed: right beneath the spot where someone had tied a large American flag to the bridge, there was a bald eagle perched on a log sticking up out of the river, a living and poignant tribute to those who had lost their lives just beyond. As we paused to watch it, I looked around me at the faces of my new neighbors and felt a bond beginning to form.
We continued along the bridge to its end, passing a small memorial garden that had been there before the collapse; the garden was now encircled in yellow police tape. As we stood there in the shade of those trees, words failing us at what we had just seen, we heard sirens sounding. Emergency vehicles pulled out from the scene, the flatbed trucks following them bearing shrouded vehicles that had just been pulled from the river. People stood still and watched in silence; one man removed his hat in respect, as though these weren't cars being borne away, but rather the victims those cars had carried into disaster. It moved everyone present. And then, as the trucks passed and the sirens faded, people started moving again, taking pictures, buying bottled water and sno-cones from the young vendor on the bridge. It was a vivid reminder that even in the face of tragedy, life goes on.
On the way back across the bridge, we stopped and gazed at the Falls of St. Anthony's, taking in the power and beauty of the water rushing down. It was as if, by crossing that bridge and back, we had been through some sort of initiation. We crossed the bridge Chicagoans, and came back Minnesotans. This was now our town, our state, our home. These were now our neighbors, our fellow Minnesotans. Our lives will go on, and they will go on here.
In truth, my husband never takes 35W in or out of the city, as our suburb lies along a different route. As a family, we had, in fact, driven across that bridge only once: we had brought our young children to Minneapolis this past spring on a fact-finding mission, to see if we would all want to make Minnesota our new home. But even after being reassured of our well-being, our families' voices still sounded shaky across those phone lines.
Unlike many families, our family did not relocate out of necessity: we relocated out of choice. We were ready for a change of scenery, for a different pace, and we were looking for a really good place to raise our family. "Minnesota? Why Minnesota?" Our friends and families were stumped as to why we would choose to move to such a cold state (a fact we have yet to verify personally, moving as we did at the beginning of an extremely hot summer).
We tried, in vain, to explain to them the beauty we saw in the wetlands, the rolling hills, the craggy bluffs. We talked until we were blue in the face about the great schools and park districts, the easy proximity to a thriving, vibrant downtown. Minnesota's moniker, "Land of 10,000 Lakes" (although it feels as though there are many more than that) failed to move them. We described the big sky, the beautiful sunsets, how excited we were to have seen foxes and pheasants and cranes all around our new home. They still could not understand. And then, the bridge collapsed.
For our relatives, it would have been easy to pull a "We told you so", to have railed at us "I knew you should never have moved there! Bridges collapsing! What kind of state is that to live in?" But the sad fact is that, as so many news reports are showing, bridges all over the country (and the world, if China is any indication) are in states of functional deficiency. Minnesota is not alone in this. A disaster of this nature could have happened anywhere, but it happened here.
Has such a tragedy changed our feelings about our newly adopted home state? Not at all. In fact, what we saw on the news and read in our local papers only reinforced our feeling that we had made the right decision on where to raise our family, because one thing that came shining out of this tragedy was what it means to be a Minnesotan. It was in the way that Minnesotans rushed to the scene to help each other. It was the way in which the local Red Cross put notices in the papers within a couple of days of the collapse that they had already received enough donations to deal with this crisis and asking kind-hearted donors to please direct their donations to a general Red Cross fund instead. It was in watching the news this morning and seeing that the Minnesota Department of Transportation was already unveiling its preliminary plans for rebuilding the bridge. (That kind of turnaround would be unthinkable in some large cities.) It was in the way that Dunwoody College of Technology offered full tuition to Jeremy Hernandez, the young man credited with helping children escape from the school bus that fell in the collapse. Minnesotans were all pulling together to pick up the pieces and help those in need in a way that made us marvel, in a way that made us proud of our decision to become Minnesotans ourselves.
When my husband's parents came for their first visit this weekend, they specifically asked to see the bridge. I hesitated: it felt intrusive, ghoulish. Being good hosts, however, we accommodated their request, driving down to the Old Stone Arch Bridge and walking slowly along its length. With every step we took closer to where one could see the jagged section of bridge jutting up from the river, my heart grew heavier. It is impossible to describe how different it was to see it in front of me, as opposed to on a television screen or in a picture. Halfway across the bridge, my daughter stopped abruptly and pointed: right beneath the spot where someone had tied a large American flag to the bridge, there was a bald eagle perched on a log sticking up out of the river, a living and poignant tribute to those who had lost their lives just beyond. As we paused to watch it, I looked around me at the faces of my new neighbors and felt a bond beginning to form.
We continued along the bridge to its end, passing a small memorial garden that had been there before the collapse; the garden was now encircled in yellow police tape. As we stood there in the shade of those trees, words failing us at what we had just seen, we heard sirens sounding. Emergency vehicles pulled out from the scene, the flatbed trucks following them bearing shrouded vehicles that had just been pulled from the river. People stood still and watched in silence; one man removed his hat in respect, as though these weren't cars being borne away, but rather the victims those cars had carried into disaster. It moved everyone present. And then, as the trucks passed and the sirens faded, people started moving again, taking pictures, buying bottled water and sno-cones from the young vendor on the bridge. It was a vivid reminder that even in the face of tragedy, life goes on.
On the way back across the bridge, we stopped and gazed at the Falls of St. Anthony's, taking in the power and beauty of the water rushing down. It was as if, by crossing that bridge and back, we had been through some sort of initiation. We crossed the bridge Chicagoans, and came back Minnesotans. This was now our town, our state, our home. These were now our neighbors, our fellow Minnesotans. Our lives will go on, and they will go on here.
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