Late last week, one of the nation’s largest cranes fell in Houston on Friday. Thirty stories and with the capacity to lift one million pounds, the crane fell at the LyondellBasell refinery, injuring only seven, but killing four. Remember, this is not the first time America’s infrastructure has failed.
For some reason, most of the troubles have started since around last summer. In Manhattan, New York, near the Chrysler Tower, last August, a steam pipe burst and erupted in the middle of the street. With a torn up road, arsenic raining for at least a block or two, buildings in the entire block destroyed up the to the tenth story, businesses ruined from all the splattering mud and chemicals, and scaring hundreds into thinking another 9/11 had occurred due to all the smoke, it seemed like a fluke accident. It wasn’t; all the pipes in Manhattan are almost a century old, and very few have been looked over since then.
New York also held its own crane fiasco. At the top of a skyscraper, a crane had fallen, injuring many. However, this was the second of two crane accidents in that year. However, this disaster got more attention due to the drama of its height and fall and the number of injured workers and civilians.
Bridges have also failed; in the past year two major bridges have collapsed, killing few but injuring and scaring many throughout the nation. These are all reminders to the main course of infrastructure disaster: Katrina. With New Orleans’ flood gates breaking, the entire city was under water—hundreds of other cities have noticed their own flood gates as being less than par due to their age, but few have been repaired.
Why have there been so many “accidents” lately? The economy is failing, the war(s) are not going according to plan, and now the country itself seems to be going down the drain.