When I hear stories like Sunday’s collapse of a section of the Oakland Bay Bridge from San Francisco, I’m thankful that I live only three blocks from where I work in Santa Barbara and have the easiest “commute” imaginable.
The tiny bridge I traverse in my daily travels is an arched wooden span across a koi pond. I’m forced to walk through Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens along Alameda Park and end up a stone’s throw away on Santa Barbara Street.
Alice Keck Park Park koi pond
About the only realistic thing that could fall on my head, barring some Act of God meteorite, uprooted palm tree or power pole, would be the palm fronds, themselves, which litter the parks and sidewalks from time to time, especially after high winds. Those may be enough to knock me out, if not kill me, perhaps, but it sure beats the odds against a falling slab of concrete.
Oakland Bay bridge collapse - April 2007
Even Chicken Little could be forgiven for not driving the Bay Bridge. Thankfully, no one other than the truck driver was seriously injured in this bizarre calamity, which brings the Bay Area’s attention, again, to the fragility of its transportation infrastructure.
Not since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which registered a 7.1 surface wave magnitude, have Bay Area commuters faced such difficulties. There were 40 deaths attributed to the collapse of a section of the I-880 Nimitz Freeway, at that time.
James Mosqueda, 51, of Woodland, CA – the driver of the gasoline tanker truck – managed to walk away from Sunday morning’s wreck with second-degree burns, going to a nearby gas station, of all places, to call a taxi for a ride to the hospital according to the California Highway Patrol. He is believed to have been trying to take the curve at too high a rate of speed causing the big rig to overturn and burst into flame.
I remember my first experiences traversing the many high-in-the-sky spaghetti loops, concrete cloverleafs and double-decker bridges upon my arrival in Southern California in 1979. Earthquake territory and high-rise anything doesn’t seem to be a marriage made in heaven, but how to move the masses in the state with the nation’s most vehicles and population – across a rubbery terrain – has to be an engineering nightmare.
You’ll pardon me for not tipping my hard hat to Caltrans, at least not while driving the bottom tier of the Bay Bridge, in case that high ceiling slab decides to stop defying gravity and makes pancakes out of my fellow travelers and me. It’s absurd to assume that anything will come between you and your ultimate demise, but I like to pretend that I have some control over my destiny, if only by avoiding the danger zones.
Therefore, I don’t work, live or spend much time in high rises, on bridges and under concrete or other things that are likely to topple over on my pointy little head. For example: Mid-East regimes opposed to American imperialism. It’s best to steer clear of those, these days, earthquakes or otherwise. You never know when one of those hard-line dictatorships is going to fall over and bury you beneath a mountain of Third World rubble.
True, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go, so don’t be walking around squawking like Chicken Little and constantly worrying about the sundry dangers of living. The danger of not living – while still alive – is just as great, if not greater, and there’s no sense wasting your life away stressing about all the things that will probably never happen, anyway.
Yet, I wouldn’t take a job in a skyscraper and I don’t make it a habit of visiting them. Nor do I want to park my cardboard box beneath a freeway overpass, no matter how underfed I might be. Leaning up against the Tower of Pisa for a photo op is one thing, but I won’t be building a lean-to within the shadows at its base.
Driving in California can be wacky enough without being stuck on a bridge or suspended freeway just waiting for Mother Nature to get her period. That bitch is cranky, as it is, so there’s no sense standing in the doorway in defiance while wondering if today is going to be the day the big one hits the fan. If momma’s in the kitchen, cooking with knives, it may be best to play outside. Just be aware of your environment.
Here in the land of fruits, flakes and nuts, we have more than our fair share of natural disasters – and some not so natural. From earthquakes, floods, mudslides, actors who want to be governor, Santa Ana winds, forest fires, road rage, riots, illegal immigrants, freeway chases, dwindling water supplies, traffic congestion, tainted lettuce, toxic pet food, pissed on spinach, pissed off liberals and paparazzi red eye – California is one big disaster ready to slide into the Pacific Ocean.
Nestled snugly amid shifting tectonic plates and a spreading plague of plastic tits, pantyless twats and Hollywood foot-in-mouth disease, the average Californicator’s chance of surviving unscathed is slimmer than E!’s Pop Tart of the Week remaining in rehab till Happy Hour or keeping her legs together till last call. Now, that’s entertainment . . . weekly.
The Kat
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