So I’m sure you’ve all heard about the local excitement by now, all 2 of you. Clearly I’m still up and about, just slow as always with this stuff. Not that my route ever takes me across 35, but I was still at work at the time of the collapse. As soon as I left work though I was headed for Big Brain Comics, just a handful of blocks away from the bridge, which was within half an hour of it happening. Police car after ambulance after firetruck just kept flying past on their way to the scene, newschoppers were buzzing overhead, and the light rail conductor had let everyone know that the bridge had gone down while we headed over there, eliciting shocked reactions from everyone on the train. Despite an urge to rush over and see what was going on, I stayed away as by that point I would have just been an in-the-way onlooker that wasn’t helping the situation(or so I tell myself).

I made myself go back out there on Sunday, but the area’s completely cordoned off(I guess the Stone Arch bridge is back open now though), so I couldn’t get much of a look, despite being on the high ground(the area with truck between the bars is all I could see of the bridge):

Given the location, I ended up mostly taking shots of the gathered crowds(look over on the sidebar). This morning though, I was given a link to some much more poignant shots that were taken right at the scene, so go look at those instead.

This whole thing is just so completely freakish that I can’t wrap my head around it. Thankfully I haven’t heard of anyone that I know being there when it happened, but its still a terrible tragedy for those who were. I’m also thankful that it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been… Thanks to the road work, there was only one lane open in each direction at the time, drastically reducing the amount of traffic on the bridge, and secondly, a thunderstorm that was very close to happening that evening never materialized, keeping things clear for those working to help the victims.

So that’s my late two cents on the matter. What went wrong, what comes next, I’m not going to touch because its too early for that by far.