TO most outside observers it seems extraordinary that the first warning about the safety of the Minnesota bridge that collapsed this week was given as long ago as 1990. To have delayed acting on the advice of civil engineers that the bridge was a danger for no less than 18 years is hardly befitting a developed country like the US. The authorities put off repairs until it was too late and the bridge suffered catastrophic structural failure and plunged 20 meters into the Mississippi River.
Now we learn that experts have been warning for the last five years that as many as 70,000 other bridges in the US are “structurally deficient” and some 20,000 others are “functionally obsolete”. It is being estimated that it would cost in excess of $180 billion and take at least 20 years to replace or reinforce these structures, by which time currently sound bridges will also need attention.
But that’s not the worst of it.
Engineers are warning that the bridges issue is only part of a far greater problem facing America. Great swaths of country’s essential infrastructure are aged and decayed. The dramatic explosion of a 90-year-old steam pipe in Manhattan recently was a high-profile example of failures that are now occurring with increasing regularity. (Also in Manhattan: One of the 9/11 Commission’s conclusions was that rescue workers died unnecessarily because police on the ground weren’t able to warn firemen in the buildings to evacuate as soon as they could have with currently available equipment and emergency response systems.)
It is ironic that a country whose scientists and engineers are constantly pushing innovation to further heights and investing billions on new space, weapons and digital technology should have allowed such a vast and dangerous accretion of legacy infrastructure, to become in grievous need of repair or replacement.
America has always been prepared to pay the high capital cost of massive engineering projects but a constant focus on the new has perhaps served the relegate the maintenance of the old. Budget constraints due to relatively low taxes have tempted politicians to postpone or cut back on essential work to keep infrastructure in good order. Small-government conservatives, such as Grover Norquist (who once famously quipped that he wanted to shrink government to a size where “we can drown it in the bathtub”), certainly aren’t going to ask for more government inspections and regulations that might help circumvent future infrastructure-related accidents.
The Minnesota bridge disaster has been described as a wake-up call for Americans. It should be a wake-up call for the rest of the world as well. If a country as wealthy as the United States can neglect its infrastructure so seriously, how must it be for other states, especially in the Third World who actually lack the financial means to maintain the likes of bridges, highways and water and power systems?
