wreckage & recovery

Originally posted on April 14, 2010 at middlecitymosaic.blogspot.com

On the evening of August 1, 2007, after calling my family members and friends to make sure they were all safe, I proceeded to ignore the collapse of the 35W bridge into the Mississippi River. When the TV news broadcast images of the collapse, rescue and recovery efforts, I changed the channel. Crossing the river in downtown Minneapolis I drove the long way around to avoid catching sight of the disaster site. For a while I stopped listening to Minnesota Public Radio because its coverage of the unfolding recovery was so thoroughly ever-present. Nine months before the bridge collapse I had returned from living in Sub-Saharan West Africa where I watched the disaster of AIDS take its daily toll on innocent lives. It was just too much for me to process the reality of a disaster here at home, here where we supposedly have the benefit of public infrastructure and modern technology to prevent the loss of innocent life. For a time following the bridge collapse – which killed 13 and injured more than a hundred in an instant – I traveled in intentional oblivion of our local disaster.

The Mississippi River forms the eastern boundary of Minneapolis’ Longfellow neighborhood where I’ve bought my first home. A few blocks from my house is access to a public bike path and walking trail along the Mississippi River bluff. To the south, the path leads to Minnehaha Falls, while to the north it descends from the bluff into the river flats and eventually leads to downtown. Traveling north on the bike path, on a brimming spring day two and a half years after the 35W bridge collapse, I rode past an unlikely ghost yard of twisted steel wreckage. In that instant, my self-imposed disaster oblivion came to an end.

Salvaged beams from the collapsed 35W bridge spread out along the banks of the Mississippi River in what was once a city park called Bohemian Flats. In the shadow of the University of Minnesota’s Washington Avenue Bridge, Bohemian Flats sits directly between the river and the Mississippi River Road with its accompanying recreational trails. A line of metal fencing separates bikers, joggers, walkers and the curious from a large collection of laid-out metal beams, each with its own identifying mark. Riding along, enjoying the river on a spring day, it was a shock to encounter the remains of this bridge that failed us, these broken pieces that caused so many broken lives.

No longer able to ignore it, I have finally engaged with this local disaster that took place so close to my home. After my bike ride, I looked into the story of the bridge wreckage and learned that the litigation resulting from this wrenching failure of modern infrastructure is far from over. Two and a half years on, lawsuits are still pending, and those marked pieces of steel are active pieces of legal evidence. The web of litigation reaches wide and has entangled the Minneapolis Park Board and the Minnesota Department of Transportation as legal antagonists with a mutual goal. Both agencies want the wreckage removed from the river flats, but the Park Board wants it removed immediately, refusing renewal of MNDOT’s park-use permits for its storage. MNDOT is seeking legal protection from any liability for tampering with evidence before it commits to moving a single beam. Between the river and the road, the bridge wreckage lies in a hard place.

Rebecca Solnit, in her book A Paradise Built in Hell, claims that in times of disaster people tend to engage with their community and work together for the common good, but my experience doesn’t directly support that idea. I responded to the 35W bridge collapse by not responding at all. As a bystander to disaster, unable to provide immediate service as a rescuer of victims or re-builder of the bridge, I felt it was a better use of my time to disengage from the media frenzy of hashing and re-hashing the circumstances of a tragedy. I and my own were unaffected by the bridge collapse, so what good would my avid attention to the anxiety-producing aftermath do for the real victims? And how much disaster can one person truly absorb in one year?

As it turns out, now that I’ve re-engaged with this important piece of our local history, one act of the ongoing bridge collapse drama is taking place just down the road. With the acute action of the bridge collapse long-finished, I am engaging with the more mundane story of its restitution. Having a home and roots along the river bluff, and knowing more about the long-term effects of our local disaster, I have reason to engage in my community’s struggle with those effects. Reason, even, to attend and participate in future community council meetings.