#5. Minneapolis Bridge Collapse
Bridges failed this year in China and in Guinea, killing 64 and 70
people, respectively. But the disaster that really grabbed U.S. headlines
was the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, where the
death toll reached only 9. The attention wasn't due only to Americans'
interest in news that's closest to home. Rather, it was that the
occurrence seemed so impossible: We think of our highways and other
infrastructure as being so well built and so rigorously inspected and
maintained as to be immune from such dramatic and sudden disintegration. But
this tragedy probably resulted from a design imperfection when the bridge
was built, followed by four decades of harsh weather and road salt, proving
that nothing is failsafe.