Bridge Collapse

[Demosthenes11]

I guess 9/11 was no big deal either, because more people die from cancer each year.

because being suicide attacked is at all comparable to a bridge collapsing

[Kurp]

Why even bother to post if you don't care? Fuck off.

[Michuru]

The reason its a big deal is because it happened 10 minutes west of me. I assume a lot of the people are from MN that posted in this thread. Also, a big catastrophe as far as bridges go hasn't happened since the 60's. It really is a big deal even if it happened in my home state. Yes, on the grand scale of things, cancer and poverty should be at the top. But this tragedy really makes people feel unsafe across the nation. You never know if that bridge will give out because "it was sort of safe" to drive on....

[divisortheory]

I guess 9/11 was no big deal either, because more people die from cancer each year.

because being suicide attacked is at all comparable to a bridge collapsing

Got it, the only thing that matters are suicide attacks and cancer.

[Raggedstar]

I don't mean to be the one without a heart here, as my condolences go out to the victims and their families, but am I the only one that really doesn't care? The school shooting a few months back really made me realize this. Why do we take a freak tragedy/accident that causes anywhere from 1-100 deaths and then take the story on as a nation? Sure, those deaths are bad and all, but what about the 10k people or w/e that die every single day from cancer or heart attacks? There is going to be so much "looking into" this for the next 375498 months by 94989 experts, deeming it just collapsed because beams failed or some shit. I think if american's put nearly as much energy into caring for things that could occur in the realm of possibility we could prevent a lot more deaths than latching on to stories like this.

Call me w/e names you want

A news crew can only give so many reports on Cancer and it's horrors before they realize they need new material.
Seriously, what else are news stations going to report? As far as day-to-day events go, it's decent. And if one station is reporting random-accident, well, you can sure bet every other station wants a report on random-accident. (Seriously... Whenever I turn on the news on a "normal" day it's so much garbage.. they really don't have news)
And just to be devil's advocate, the bridge didn't have a reason to fall. It seems fairly important to figure out why exactly it fell--considering it passed a regular-national-expection-whatever a couple years ago. The worst it had was a few small cracks that hundreds of bridges have, and if this WAS the cause... well, more bridge news in the future.
(And on a side note, are alot of people actually scared to go on bridges? I had a friend telling me they were earlier, and it seems that quite afew people are... just something I never really considered a danger to me)

[Thelam]

I'm terrified of bridges =(, but I also can't swim so that might contribute

[Demosthenes11]

meh, I guess I'm just sick of the news anymore. I'm interested when it happens, but 5+ hours later, I don't need to be shown the same pictures and told the same story, and I especially don't need durdur interviews of "It was really scary!" or "It just suddenly collapsed!"

I'm not really saying more focus from the news either on more pressing issues, just more interest from the public in general. Attention spans seem to be lacking in america on those sort of things though, unlike a lacy Peterson.

[Kurp]

meh, I guess I'm just sick of the news anymore. I'm interested when it happens, but 5+ hours later, I don't need to be shown the same pictures and told the same story, and I especially don't need durdur interviews of "It was really scary!" or "It just suddenly collapsed!"

I'm not really saying more focus from the news either on more pressing issues, just more interest from the public in general. Attention spans seem to be lacking in america on those sort of things though, unlike a lacy Peterson.

If you aren't interested, change the channel and watch some Cheers reruns. There's no way you could change it though, right?

Seriously though, if you don't care then get the fuck out of the discussion after you pat your own back for stirring something up.

[Chreman]

If this didn't happen ~10 minutes away from me, I probably wouldn't give it a passing thought. . . which is probably how a bunch of people think. Just accept that something unimportant to you can mean loads more to others and gtfo of the discussion if you're going to belittle our concern.

[Demosthenes11]

I'm not trying to belittle any concerns, I'm just wondering why a lot of people are so affected by it (besides those that live in the general vicinity). Can call me all the names you want I guess, but it's a valid question.

[Norelco]

All I know is...this is some fucked up shit. I was watching CNN yesterday about this, and they were interviewing two teenage girls and their father, and they were saying their mom hasn't come home and was missing. They had extreme hope that she was checked into a hospital as a Jane Doe or something, and remained very optimistic. Immediately after that clip, the fucking news anchor goes "I'm very sad to say, CNN has just learned the woman they are looking for is in fact among the 4 confirmed dead."

I was just like...fuck. That sucks so goddamn much.

[volcanicweather]

I live less than 5 minutes away from this bridge in-between NE Minneapolis / Dinkytown. It's still pretty surreal. Much like others, I received a plethora of phone calls in regards to my safety. It was so difficult to get a hold of some people and vice versa however due to the fact cell phone towers were jammed from all of the calls going to and from them.

It seems as thought a lot of people don't view Minneapolis as that large of a city, because the city itself isn't as densely populated as other cities within the city limits. But rest assured, after St. Paul is included and all of the surrounding suburbs, it really is a large metropolitan area.

Demos - this really isn't the proper thread nor the topic in general to be a jackass in. If you don't care that's fine, but A LOT of people definitely do and you should respect this. To be honest, it sounds like you're just more pessimistic about the news in general more than this scenario, so I think it would be appreciated if you put your "the news sucks lolz" opinions elsewhere. I don't like mass media news either, but I don't go around saying "I don't care I'm sick of the news" on topics which really are important to people. That's just disrespectful.

The reason why this topic is so prevalent in the news is because it's something everyone can relate to. Not many people can relate to stories about AIDS because they haven't had direct experience with it. It's the same thing with school shootings... we all went to school, we have all been over a bridge before... it's a little easier to conceive this situation possibly happening to us, mainly because these are everyday activities to a large sector of Americans, whereas extreme medical concerns aren't (even though they are still extremely important to be aware of).

Topic change - doesn't traffic suck now in the Minneapolis area? Takes me almost twice as long to get to work downtown =(

[Norelco]

Here's some amazing photos of the whole thing: http://www.conphoto.net/collapse.html

[XxSlusherxx]

Now that I'm sorta past the college age, I'm not usually on that bridge unless I'm going to my grandmas house, so I wouldn't really say I was lucky, what does make me lucky is I really don't know anyone who had a friend/loved one involved.

I was actually at the Twins game at the time, it was really aquard, they didn't play any music or any of the games between innings, and attendance was really horrible for dollar dog night. I felt like I was at a little league game. When we were outside we actually saw the smoke, but we had no idea what it was from, but they announced it fairly quickly once we got inside, they wanted stuff to get cleaned up before 20k people we're sent out on the road so you actually we're not allowed to leave earily.

[Priran]

I guess 9/11 was no big deal either, because more people die from cancer each year.

That's an unusually idiotic statement coming from you.

9/11 wasn't important because of how many people died, it was important because it was a paramilitary attack on US soil. It highlighted problems in the way the Twin Towers were built, sure, but most of the importance of 9/11 was the increase of national security and the war it caused.

Why is this bridge important? Judging from what's been coming out of Katie Couric's fat mouth since it fell it's because of how recently the steam pipe explosion was in NYC and now everyone's all omgomg about America's infrastructure. But from what most other people are saying, they're just scared that since this one bridge fell, every other fucking bridge in the country is going to fucking explode, at the exact moment they're crossing it. It's like people who refuse to fly after they see one airplane crash, when 5 minutes before the traffic report mentioned which highways are backed up with traffic because of car crashes.

Raggedstar is right, the only reason crap like this gets featured instead of something like cancer is because cancer is boring.