During a four-day FEMA exercise prior to the collapse, they learned the value of developing relationships with adjacent counties, cities and agencies and discovered they needed to invest in emergency management response.
The city spent more than $25 million updating its telecommunications system, nearly $20 million on new 800 MHz radios and about $8 million on special operations teams.
Minneapolis officials said the probably saved lives during the treacherous response just after the incident. But in the end, the bridge still fell and 13 people who were on it perished.
Since then, we've learned more about that bridge and others like it across the country. The American Society of Civil Engineers warned in 2006 that a quarter of the nation's 600,000 bridges were at risk and that it would cost nearly $10 billion every year for 20 years to fix them.
In 2008, The Associated Press reported that two-thirds of the busiest "problem" bridges in each state had nothing more than regular maintenance because of cost, politics or bureaucracy. That's not surprising considering state budget shortfalls. And Americans are driving less because of high gas prices, which means less money for the highway trust fund.
But U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said progress is being made. "I'm comfortable telling you that we should not have another incident like that," she told National Public Radio.
Kent Harries, a University of Pittsburgh engineering professor, was just as comfortable telling USA Today, "We will see more bridge collapses."
Harries wrote in an e-mail to me that states need to make difficult decisions or face the consequences. "Any solution will necessarily include public resources, although this will rationally not be sufficient. A paradigm shift is necessary. Resources will be reallocated and hard decisions taken."
I proposed to Harries a tax on the oil and gas companies that, for the good of the country, could surely part with some of those profits they've been raking in. He said he, too, has funding ideas, but offered that his credibility would be offset by the fact that he was raised in Canada, which is much less averse to taxation than the United States.
Minnesota learned about making hard choices. It has since raised its gas tax and is phasing in surcharges to pay for $6.6 billion in bonds for road and bridge projects over the next 10 years.
And kudos to other states, like New Jersey, for at least addressing the situation by moving funds from road projects to help pay for $605 million in bridge repairs. But in other states, a shortage of money and too little political mettle are delaying action.
As Minnesota knows, this is a problem that will inflict pain one way or another.
