In My Back Yard

I've crossed that bridge thousands of times. Thousands. It used to be part of my daily commute. On my way to Twins games and Vikings games. On my way to the hospital to deliver my babies. On my way to visit family and friends. On my way to the mall.

And today, all I can do is thank God that me, and every member of my family is accounted for this morning. You see disasters like this and you think, "wow, thank God that doesn't happen here." Only it does. Today it happened in my own back yard.


As far as I can tell, we've been lucky. Only 4 confirmed dead this morning, down from 7 last night. But there are 20-30 more missing. It could have been much worse. MUCH worse. The bridge was down to one lane, under construction for resurfacing. Had the bridge been open as it usually is, there would have been 4 lanes of stopped, rush hour traffic heading in each direction. So, instead of 8 packed lanes of cars, trucks, and buses, there were 2. Thank God for small blessings.

Hubby's best friend works as a process server. He drives 10 hours a day. He crossed that bridge just 15 minutes before it collapsed. He called us soon after we heard that it had collapsed to say that he's never going over a bridge under construction again. He said that when he was driving over it, there were large patches of the bridge missing where you could look straight down into the water. While that's freaky, the experts keep telling us that had nothing to do with the collapse. We'll see how that turns out in the end, but I'm going to have to agree with the best friend for a while - I'll contain my trips over bridges to those that are fully intact.

I'm sending out thoughts and prayers to those who died, and to those who are still missing, and to their families. And I say thank you to all of those who risked their own lives to rescue and help others. And today, I'll count those small blessings that I usually take for granted. Because when something like this strikes so close to home, it's impossible to do otherwise.