Wear and Tear

You don't have to tell anybody around here about the magnitude of the 35W bridge. Asking someone in this neck of the woods how often they crossed the bridge that fell forty feet on Wednesday will yield similar results to asking them how many cups of coffee they've had that day, or how many times they've pooped in the last twenty four hours.
And if Anderson Cooper reports on it? It's a pretty big deal.
But leave it to Minnesota to have phone lines at every blood donation center tied up. Actually, to not be able to get phone calls through to the two area codes in the Twin Cities because the lines are tied up in effort to get a hold of friends and family. For locals to take their boats down the Mississippi with their friends with scuba gear to see if they can help.
Some call that human nature, but I live here so I call it Minnesota Nice.

If one in six hundred thousand bridges collapse every twenty years, and the one this decade hits quite close to home, I think it takes a pretty dimwitted government and transportation department to not test bridges that hundreds of thousands of people cross every day. And I don't doubt that they do test them. After all, only four states have higher quality bridges than ours. Unless, you know, within just over a month, the most widely used bridge in the state digressed forty five spots.