Bridge Collapses
Yesterday we had a few things for the class to get done and one of the other instructors and I spent the afternoon tutoring one of our students who was having difficulties. We actually stayed late and so on the way home rather than mess with cooking and all I stopped off and picked up a couple of pizza’s for dinner. I then swung by a neighborhood store and picked up some lottery tickets and then was going to the post office to check the box, but there was an accident blocking the parking lot so instead I just went home.
I flipped on the TV and was getting on the computer when I noticed Fox News was reporting an incident in Minneapolis about a bridge collapse. The initial reports were kind of sketchy but then they started showing pictures and I was shocked. The bridge was huge and the damage devastating. There was a semi and a school bus along with many cars.
Through the rest of the evening I watched as they kept reporting and on particular thing caught my ear. I guess a year earlier they had discovered some cracks and I guess they didn’t follow it up. If this is true I can just imagine the lawsuits.
It also got me thinking about how many bridges I cross each day on the way to and from work and while traveling around town. I sure hope Caltrans has been keeping up the maintenance on ours here. Also it makes me worry about how they would hold up in an earthquake since I do live in an area prone to earthquakes.
I know that a few years back they did a lot of retrofitting of the freeway bridges in San Diego to make them less susceptible to collapse during a quake, but when you see something like that on the news it really gets you thinking.
A few weeks they had the tanker truck that had a wreck and when it caught fire caused the bridge up there to collapse. I just hope that things like that could be prevented. Anyway I will hold the victims in my prayers and I hope the recovery process moves quickly.
This morning was quite a frustrating day. I got up on time and all, but I had to install faults as soon as I got to work and a few of the radios were not cooperating. Anyway instead of having the class start troubleshooting at 7:15 as planned we didn’t get them started until 8. Then I had to cut the troubleshooting time back a bit because on of the instructors has an evaluation today and borrowed the class for an hour. At least I am ahead of schedule so we will just work on more troubleshooting tomorrow and if we have to finish up on Monday.
Today I may be able to go back to Stargate Warriors. I had PM’ed an admin asking how long it would be until I could go back and was told the period is 14 days, but someone we know from another fed quit and it was only seven days. I just want to make sure so I do not wind up fedless. I will talk to the folks tonight when I get home. Laila wants me to start posting the standings for planets and OP posted of the fed page. It should not be too hard and so I will get that all put together. Other than that I guess things are going great.
Well time to get back to doing the job. My break is over and I have some stuff to get done.
August 02 2007 03:51 pm | News and Sympathy and Prayers and Unification Wars and Work