The Key Bridge Collapse - A Black Swan Event?

 

Last night a huge container ship rammed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and collapsed the bridge, taking with it a number of vehicles and tossing people into the frigid waters of the bay. Former National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn, went to X (the former social media site known as Twitter), calling the bridge collapse a Black Swan event. A Black Swan Event is an unexpected major event that has unpredictable large scale impact. A Black Swan event is one that in hindsight could have been predicted, but seems so unlikely that we really don't think it will happen. 

As a Black Swan event, the Key Bridge disaster was entirely predictable. Some day, quite by chance, there was every chance that a giant container ship in the harbor would lose power, go astray and crash into the bridge. Ships move. Bridges don't. And bridges have been known fall before due to other factors like earthquakes, age, and structural issues. A surprising number of ships and barges have struck and damaged or collapsed a bridge. These incidents don't get beyond the local news in most cases if there is not a substantial loss of life, so we are therefore confident, perhaps more so than is warranted, that the ship guidance systems, trained captains and harbormasters would perfectly prevent such events. So, though it's predictable that such a thing could happen, it still comes at a surprise. After such a huge event, people get all a twitter and the ripples of the shock of the event pass through delicately intertwined social, economic and government systems. We should be resilient enough to resist knee jerk reactions to big scale traumatic events, but, though we should be able to, most of us don't. One can always tell folks, "Hey, don't panic," but people will panic anyway. 

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse
Wikimedia Commons

But it's not like bridges haven't collapsed before. The Scottish railroad bridge over the River Tay in
a violent storm in 1879, collapsed carrying a train load of passengers to the bottom of the Firth of Forth. The engineer had failed to consider wind loading from storm winds when he designed the bridge. It was a shock, but it wasn't unpredictable had someone calculated wind loading into the design as it has ever since the tragedy. In 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed into Puget Sound in a 40 mph wind due to a design that, like the Tay Bridge, also failed to take into account the lateral pressure of the wind on the suspension bridge and the need to consider both aerodynamic and resonance factors in the design. A dog was killed.

As recently as 2007, the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River, killing 13. In 1989, a massive earthquake collapse sections of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge and caused 63 deaths, nearly 3,800 injuries, and an estimated $6 billion in property damage. So despite our confident reliance on bridges, they do unexpectedly fail.

Strikes on bridges by ships have happened before: 

• In 2007, the container ship M/V Cosco Busan struck one of the towers of the western span of the rebuilt San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge because of a “pilot’s blunder in the fog,”. The bridge didn't collapse, but it was a near thing.  
• In 1974, a barge struck the Endom bridge over the Ouachita River in Monroe Louisiana and knocked it down. Thank God it was a swing bridge and was open. The inebriated tugboat captain rammed a heavy barge into a span of the bridge, collapsing it and leaving a police cruiser stranded on the center swing span. The barge rammed Pier No. 3, the rest pier for the western end of the swing span and the eastern pier for the Petit through truss No. 3. According to the local paper, after the barge hit the pier, "the span twisted and rolled to one side and collapsed into the river. It happened in the middle of the night so no one was on the bridge. It did, however, demonstrate once again that boats can knock down bridges. I drove over the adjacent Interstate highway bridge the next morning and saw a bridge I had driven over many times lying in the river. since then have avoided being on bridges when a ship was passing underneath. 
• In 2009, a vessel pushing eight barges rammed into the Popp’s Ferry Bridge in Biloxi, Mississippi, resulting in a 150-foot section of the bridge collapsing into the bay. 
• In 1998, a tow boat, The Anne Holly rammed the center span of the Eads Bridge in St. Louis Harbor . Eight barges broke loose. Three of them hit a gambling vessel permanently moored below the bridge. Fifty people suffered minor injuries.
  
• In 2002, A barge hit the Interstate 40 bridge over the Arkansas River at Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, collapsing a 500-foot section of road and plunging vehicles into the water. Fourteen people died and 11 were injured.
• In 1993, A towboat, pushing an empty hopper barge, hit a support tier of the Judge William Seeber Bridge in New Orleans. Two spans collapsed onto the barge and two cars carrying three people along with the four-lane bridge deck dropped into the canal. One person died and two were seriously injured.
• In 2001, a tugboat and barge struck the Queen Isabella Causeway in Port Isabel, Texas, causing the midsection of the bridge to drop 80 feet into the bay Eight people died as unsuspecting drivers drove off into the hole.
• In 1980, the Summit Venture was navigating the tortuous Tampa Bay shipping channel, when a sudden, blinding squall knocked out the ship’s radar. The ship sheared off a support of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, dropping a 1,400-foot section of concrete roadway during the morning rush hour. Seven vehicles, including a bus with 26 aboard, fell 150 feet into the water. Thirty-five people died.
  
• In 1993, a string of barges being pushed by a towboat in dense fog hit and knocked the Big Bayou Canot railroad bridge out of line near Mobile, Alabama. In minutes, an Amtrak train with 220 people aboard derailed on the displaced bridge, killing 47 and injuring 103.

And of course we will see an outburst of conspiracy theories from all the usual people after this latest tragedy. As it turns out, many people are just naturally fearful of randomness. They would much rather believe this was a deliberate attack by evil human beings, rather than cope with the fact that it happened due to blind chance. Random events really freak such people at. They cannot believe that everything is not planned and orchestrated by somebody somewhere. These guys would blame the Deep State if an asteroid dropped from the sky and obliterated Manhattan. They could never live with the idea that at any moment a space rock could drop on their heads or a volcano pop up in their back yard.

Should We Reject Religion as Outdated?

There is a movement among Christians to reject "religion" in favor of being "spiritual" instead. Adherents to this theology do not seem to like going to church, listening to preachers or taking the Bible literally as the Word of God. This troubles me. We've been warned against spiritualism in Scripture and from the pulpits of Christendom. Unlike my spiritual friends, I am content to accept the Word as my guide and to wait till eternity until God offers me explanations of how everything works,

 before I cast aside religion altogether. Discovering the things we have not been shown yet, should keep me thoroughly entertained for millions of years. God's penmen could only tell us what they saw, what they experienced and what they understood in their walk with Him on Earth, when they wrote all that down. Sadly, we see through a glass darkly. I have found that it takes knowing God in His completeness to find one's way to the truth.

 

I'd be very careful about tossing out all the parts of Christian "religion", including the organized bits, that may not suit our modern clothes. Some ideas could stand to go. For instance, a lot of people stubbornly cling to the idea that God punishes dead folk by chicken frying them for eternity. The thing is Scripture doesn't actually teach that. It was a handy way to keep people afraid and in the pews with their purses opened. That Satan introduced such evil ideas doesn't void all organized religion. Paul warned about that. He says we should meet and work together even more so as we see the end approaching. And if you aren't seeing the signs on the evening news, you're not paying attention.

And if you actually come to know God experientially, you'd know He's not a Hitler or Stalin or Caligula to inflict unfathomable cruelty on creatures He6 lov, and it very specifically teaches that the human soul is not by nature immortal (John 3:16). God truly IS love and knowing that, you'll soon come to realize and recognize what some branches of the church and some churchmen who claim they have spoken for and still speak for God, take his name in vain (a severe violation of a commandment with some pretty harsh consequences).

 

In my study of psychology in grad school, I recognized many of the therapeutic tools we were taught to use were, in fact, the same sorts of things Christ and the apostles built into the church as a way of altering human bad behavior - prayer, praise, study and sharing what we learned from the other four. Turns out, Jesus knew how the human mind works and built things into His church that would help us change our behavior (what we Adventists call sanctification). We get close to emulating religious training with the behavioral/reality therapy techniques psychologists and counselors use. Seems Jesus understood how the human mind works.

 

We're just now catching up and seeing the edges of God's amazingly detailed creation. The sciences, when freed of politics, have begun to see evidence of God as Moses did. Not fully His face, but His "back parts" - the footprints of deity. Physicists, biologists, astronomers and mathematicians have recently begun to discover answers to questions they never thought to ask because they dismissed the idea of a God altogether from the very beginning. Too many approached science by first rejecting the idea of a pan-dimensional being with vast power because of what He is; one described as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end all at once. That was a pretty scientifically advanced idea for a former fisherman, traveling self-educated preacher, and prisoner of Rome living out on an island in the sea to have come up with all on his own. The remarkable thing is that the Bible we've got is flexible enough to guide everyone from the poor, the uneducated and simple folk to some of the most brilliant intellectuals of our time.

So, we probably should be very careful about rejection "religion" in its entirety and making it a dirty word. Much of the greatest good in history has come from the exercise of Christian religion, from ending the tossing of infants into the fires of Molech and Baal, the forced prostitution in Dagon's temples, the massive human sacrifices of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incans, and the scourge of slavery that persisted for far too long in Earth's history.

Tossing out the religious baby with the truly evil bath of some of the worst cultures in history, could set us back centuries. Already we've sacrificed more than 50 million unborn infants in the past half century or so. Humans have committed genocide on an unbelievable scale and seem to throw a new war every few years with result death and carnage. Does anyone believe it's going to get better if we end Christian organized religion in favor of searching for truth within our own screwed up heads. 

Me, I'm going to seek enlightenment from my creator. Looking around at humans, I don't think I'm going to find truth and goodness in the unconverted human heart. I think that comes from Someone outside ourselves and navel-gazing isn't going to find it.

(C) 2024 by Tom King

 

 

Do We Need a Law to Force Grocery Stores to Stop Throwing Away Food

In America, you have no excuse for being hungry.

Short Answer:  Nope!

Ever once in a while, some dear lefty buddy of mine will throw a post up on Facebook about a clever way that France (why is it always France) has passed a law making it illegal for grocery stores to throw away food. It feeds the hungry and stops global warming they say, thus killing two virtual birds with one stone. It seems that decomposing food releases carbon into the air much to the dismay of environmentalists and the joy of plants everywhere who need carbon to breathe.

Well, it's true that France passed such a law back in 2016. The law made it illegal for any grocery store larger than 4000 square feet to throw away food that is getting close to its sell-by date. On the surface, it all sounds like a nifty idea and even punishes those greedy corporate grocery chains.

The law requires stores to stop tossing useful nutritious, if slightly aged food. Instead, they would have to donate it to some charitable nonprofit that would hand the food out to the deserving poor and hungry while making sure only the people getting it actually need it.

And like any good law, the mechanics of it is fraught with unintended consequences. It makes the supermarket responsible for sorting and shipping out the food which adds to the cost. There is some concern that if the poor don't buy food, the grocery store will lose money from even that small amount of lost business. Remember that of all retail, grocers operate on a very narrow margin, earning, after expenses from 1 to 3 cents on every dollar they spend.

Don't get me started on the economics of making this idea a government program. My friend Mark Milliorn has done an excellent explanation of the economic chaos caused by getting government involved in this scheme. There's one reason not to do this that Mark missed. 

AMERICANS ALREADY DO EXACTLY THIS SAME THING WITHOUT A LAW FORCING THEM TO DO IT. And we do it efficiently without wrecking the economy and we insure that no one goes hungry. The surest way to mess it all up is to make it a government program. 

I worked in East Texas for close to 4 decades, helped start 5 nonprofit organizations to fill community needs that weren't being met by government programs. One in 5 East Texans didn't have ready access to transportation. One in four were seniors or disabled adults. I helped write community collaborative grants for homeless programs and agencies. And I helped raise funds for food bank programs.

The East Texas Food Bank was a huge project. ETFB operated a large warehouse as a distribution point for the East Texas Food Bank programs in the region. Several grocery stores and chains donated food being rotated off the shelves to the food bank. It was carried to the ETFB warehouse in the store's trucks and by the food banks vehicles. Volunteers from all over come in and donate their time to sort the food onto pallets, where it is labeled and stored. 

A local church school's kids
volunteer time at the Food Bank

Across the region community organizations, nonprofits and churches set up food banks in their facilities. Sometimes several churches cooperate to set up a food bank location. They buy shelves and coolers and freezers from a company that resells and recycles store appliances.  The individual location sets up a room like a store. When someone comes in needing groceries, church secretaries or volunteers give them a basket and lets them shop for what they need. The bank staff know what's available and help to distribute it fairly.

The program was particularly successful during economic hard times. People would need food to time them over till they started work. So instead of going through the Food Stamp Offices' proctological exam, they pick up a couple of bags of groceries at the church food bank. Other ways food is distributed is through outdoor distributions in parks and public facilities, through soup kitchens, nonprofit residential facilities, and Meals on Wheels.

The upshot was that one day panicked Food Stamp officials summoned us all to a meeting where they announced that the feds were cutting $800,000 from their budget.  AND IT WAS OUR FAULT THEY CLAIMED. Apparently, we did so well with the food banks that their applications dropped significantly and DC cut their budget. They were planning to spend $150,000 on a marketing campaign, the theme of which was "Food Stamps are not part of welfare reform."

It was then that I discovered where they got the "One in five children go to bed hungry" slogan. The spokesman for the Food Stamp office let it slip out that their applications were way down. I asked if they were going to make the application process easier and was told "NO!" It was then that the I found that the 1-in-5 hunger statistic was based on the number of applications, not the number of food stamp awards. What they really wanted was more applications. 

Our little church/nonprofit-based food banks would pick up truckloads of food at the central bank. We would pay 1 cent per pound to help cover the food bank's operating costs. The system runs entirely without state or federal government assistance. The grocery stores donate to the central food bank without being coerced by government. Other independent nonprofit volunteers from organizations like Gleaners whose volunteers harvest fields gleaning potatoes, yams, carrots and other crops after the farmers do the first pass, also donate harvested produce and overflow stuff from festivals and fairs. 

The system works smoothly and doesn't get mucked up by government bureaucrats. And nobody knows who needs food like church secretaries and the field staffs of community organizations. 

So if the government can keep its grubby hands off of us, we can make sure the greatest health threat to Americans in poverty is obesity and we can do it efficiently and economically.

Americans are good people by nature; Christians are under orders to be good people. We give more money to charity, to third world countries and the poor than the US government does.

© 2023 by Tom King