SPicy has not commented on the 35W tragedy, partly because SPicy does not feel that there is much value in political arguments about what happened. This is NOT SPicy's comment, this person found SPicy, and SPicy feels compelled to forward the story received this from a far away reader: 

I was in Atlanta last night on my way home from Alabama when I heard about the collapse of the I-35W bridge, it was a big shock because Industrial Construction Company built the bridge and I was intimately involved with the construction as an employee of Industrial. Dad was alive then and I remember that we had a long meeting with the Carpenters union to get them to allow us to work extra overtime to complete the bridge before late fall.  The steel delivery was late and we had to erect it working 6 or more days per week and long hours. The steel went up in record time as did the deck and we beat winter. The bridge was the last riveted bridge in Minnesota and we had to bring riveting crews from Jacksonville , Florida where we had just completed a bridge over the St Johns River.

 

The bridge was an unusual design using just two trusses with overhang brackets to add width to the bridge. Many bridges of this width would use four trusses so the opposing traffic would be supported on separate systems. The design was structurally sound but it lacked redundancy in case of failure of any truss component, the whole truss would fail instead of just one roadway. The need to keep piers out of the river at this location dictated a truss as opposed to girder spans and this also required a 3 span continuous design for efficiency and this again meant one span depended upon the adjacent span. So like dominoes the whole thing went, both roadways and all 3 truss spans as well as some girder approach spans.

 

What failed, I don't know but maybe something in the trusses seems the most likely to me, we will be told I am sure. I feel confident that the initial construction was competent and the fact that it functioned well for forty years indicates that is true. Bridges like this had a design life of 50 years and often lasted beyond 100  years. Of course those with more conservative design and more redundant design will get through the longest. Todays designs for major bridges have a 100 year design life. One of the problems with building more and more roads and bridges is that they have to be maintained and this cost a lot of money. For politicians to take the position that no new taxes will come under my administration only works if there is adequate funds available to do the job. That doesn't mean that this the reason for the collapse, but we will find out and if it is maybe there will be some re-thinking about raising gas taxes.

 

I certainly feel for the victims of the collapse and their families and wish it had never happened.

 

- Author's name redacted by SPicy

SPicy wishes well upon the survivors and those that lost their lives.