Wednesday, August 1, 2007

A nasty accident, not as bad as it might have been?

It appears, several hours into the coverage, that the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis this evening has caused a relatively small number of fatalities --- tragic for those who died, and more so for their families: yet the fact that there was a schoolbus with over 50 children on board, and there were no fatalities among them: the fact that the traffic was travelling slowly, and so there were fewer cars unable to stop in time: the fact that as of now they are reporting only 6 confirmed deaths, looks as though this may have been luckier than it might have been.
I am sure that the casualty figures will rise: and as they do there will be more and more grief. My heart goes out to the bereaved and to the injured.

Yours, in sadness,
N.

4 comments:

OldLady Of The Hills said...

A terrible tragedy, indeed! Shocking to see the pictures of this collapse...I had on MSNBC And they were live from the scene....
My heart goes out to all of the family's who lost loved ones, and to the injured, too!

Cornish Dreamer said...

I heard this reported on radio 4 this morning. What a terrible thing to happen.

To my memory, this isn't the first time a bridge has collapsed in the US. I remember studying something similar during a physics lecture some time ago. The architects had failed to calculate for the weight of cars stationary or slow-moving in say a traffic jam.

It is a tragic loss of life, and my heart goes out too.

RT

flleenie said...

the collapse of the bridge was catastrophic. I can't even imagine the fear those people felt when they realized what was happening!


By the way, Michelle sent me

BreadBox said...

OOLOTH: Tragic, and sad, but lucky too, I think.

RT: the most famous example in physics is one of a resonance phenomenon: there was a bridge, I believe it was over the Tacoma Narrows, and if I recall correctly the heavy winds blowing it set up a resonance which set it to rocking back and forth until it broke --- spectacularly. And on film, yet: I believe it was in the 1930s or 40s: it was seen as an old film when I was in school thrmptysevix years ago...


flleenie: yes, it was catastrophic, and tragic, and serious: but compared with the disaster it could have been, I think that there are a lot of very lucky people around: in particular, the schoolbus full of children who nearly went over the edge, for example.