There's some conversation going on in 'Post what you are thinking right now' but I thought this was worthy of its own thread. I know there aren't too many Minnesota kids here on THMB, but I know that some of you do have friends & family members here.
I'm going to post here what I posted in the other thread.
Last night was the first since last week that I hadn't driven over that bridge. My boyfriend goes to school right past the south end of the bridge, and lives just two exits past the north end of the bridge. He works about 10 miles south of there, but during rush hour it takes around half an hour for him to make it home. He got off work a little after 5:30, and as he was driving north on 35W, he decided to turn around and go south to visit his grandparents instead. I am so thankful for that, because at the usual rate of traffic flow, he would've been VERY close to the bridge, if not possibly on it, at the time of the collapse. I was shopping at a mall just a few miles north, and was so glad that I didn't ask Isaac to meet me there after work or something...because then he definitely would have been in the area.
He sent me a text message around 6:30 saying that the bridge had collapsed. I didn't really understand what he was talking about, and just sorta shrugged it off. I didn't realize the extent of what had happened. They had been doing road construction, and it was down from 4-5 lanes each way to 1-2. I thought maybe they had intentionally destroyed a section of the bridge or something. Then my friend & I walked past a TV that was showing the news. Knowing I'd driven across that probably 20 times in the past week terrified me. I tried to remember if I noticed anything out of the ordinary while I drove on it (did it shake, did it feel sturdy) but nothing came to mind. I'm just glad that it did happen while so many lanes were closed. If all of the lanes had been open, I can't even imagine how much worse it would have been.
While watching the news last night, I saw a friend of mine from high school named Jimmy. I didn't catch all of the interview, but he was either right behind the schoolbus or on it, and helped get the kids off. I can't imagine what was going through his mind while all of that was happening!!
I'm at work right now, and have been reading articles, looking at pictures, and watching video clips and interviews about it...it's just insane. Like I said, it's definitely nowhere near as bad as it could have been, but it's just one of those things that you never think would ever happen...especially when you think about how many thousands of times you've driven on that bridge over the past few years.
Here are some photos from one of our newspapers' websites:
Minneapolis will never be the same...
