Surviving The Minneapolis Bridge Disaster By 15 Minutes

Our friend Lyn travels all over the US for John Deere, but yesterday she was driving from Moline, Illinois to her home near Minneapolis. Since we had just been to Iowa, naturally as she crossed over into that state and got on I-35 north, she thought of us and gave us a call on her cell phone.

Since she was driving and talking to me, every now and then we would lose a signal as a new tower picked up her phone. That happened several times while she was telling me about the new and wonderful things in her life. I don't know if those interruptions caused her to drive any slower, but near the end of our conversation it was 5 PM where we live, and as I looked at the news about the collapsed bridge I got right on the phone to call her so she would know about it.

She didn't answer, which of course was alarming, but I found out later it was because her dad had called her first and she had been talking to him. She did call me back and said she knew about the bridge, and that she was OK. She said she had been about 15 minutes south of the bridge when her dad called.

I called her today and left a message and told her that if my comments about losing her signal/call and her having to adjust her phone slowed her up any, I was so happy that it did so and that she was not on that bridge.

Why does this all matter so much? Other than the obvious joy that she was not one of the people killed, it would have been another crushing blow to her family because Lyn's older brother was killed in a car accident on the Tacoma Narrows bridge in 1995. Losing them both on bridges would have been a sad irony.

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Comments

[Alison]

That's scary. How fortunate that your friend is ok, even looking at pictures of the bridge gives me the chills.