As I illustrated Sunday in the post, "Snow Job," one of the chief problems with the call to "shrink government" is that it tends to mean reducing the expenditures for the basic services that we all depend on. For this post, I am going to provide an example of how reduced spending in one specific area could severely impact most any person reading along.
I don't if bridge safety is a major issue in your country, but in the US, it is a BIG deal. PBS reported in 2008 that, according to the Federal Highway Administration, "more than 72,000 bridges across the country are in some sort of trouble." According to a Newsweek article from 2007, "A 2003 report from the American Society of Civil Engineers called 27 percent of American bridges "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete." The picture in U.S. cities is worse: the report says that one in three urban bridges qualifies as 'structurally deficient.'"
So, as it now stands, there are a large number of bridges in this nation that are not in the best of shape. Now, flash forward ten years. Over that ten year period, funding for bridge inspections was drastically slashed. In fact, the number of bridge inspectors was reduced to the point in which very few bridges were inspected and, even worse, there was no money to fix the bridges EXCEPT in the most dire circumstances.
Let's say that your area is hit by whatever extreme weather event is appropriate for your locale. It could be an earthquake, tsunami, flood, hurricane, tornado, avalanche or a combination of two or more. If this weather event knocked out all of the bridges (or 75%, 50% or even 25%) in a 10 mile radius of your home, how would this occurrence impact your community?
I can tell you that where I live -- in rural South Bend, Washington -- we would be cutoff from the outside world!! We wouldn't be able to travel on US Highway 101 more than 1 mile to our west and no more than 3 miles to our north and east. Even the county roads that head south would present impassible barriers because we live in an area with bridges everywhere!
The most likely major climatic event that we would face here would be an earthquake with a tsunami. The tsunami would knock out our small harbor and so the ONLY way supplies could be brought in would be via helicopter. With so many bridges destroyed or damaged, it literally would take months before normal travel could be restored.
Chances are great that the majority of our bridges (over rivers, creeks, and sloughs) would suffer damage. This is an unfortunate fact in 2011 and would be a calamity in 2021 IF bridge inspections and retrofitting had been severely curtailed over the previous decade.
This is the kind of ugly scenario that can play out when politicians begin wielding the budget ax to "shrink government." A nation's infrastructure gets placed on the back burner and needed maintenance receives the short shrift. Many citizens will applaud such efforts until the day comes that the bridge on the edge of town becomes a bridge too far.
I don't if bridge safety is a major issue in your country, but in the US, it is a BIG deal. PBS reported in 2008 that, according to the Federal Highway Administration, "more than 72,000 bridges across the country are in some sort of trouble." According to a Newsweek article from 2007, "A 2003 report from the American Society of Civil Engineers called 27 percent of American bridges "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete." The picture in U.S. cities is worse: the report says that one in three urban bridges qualifies as 'structurally deficient.'"
So, as it now stands, there are a large number of bridges in this nation that are not in the best of shape. Now, flash forward ten years. Over that ten year period, funding for bridge inspections was drastically slashed. In fact, the number of bridge inspectors was reduced to the point in which very few bridges were inspected and, even worse, there was no money to fix the bridges EXCEPT in the most dire circumstances.
Let's say that your area is hit by whatever extreme weather event is appropriate for your locale. It could be an earthquake, tsunami, flood, hurricane, tornado, avalanche or a combination of two or more. If this weather event knocked out all of the bridges (or 75%, 50% or even 25%) in a 10 mile radius of your home, how would this occurrence impact your community?
I can tell you that where I live -- in rural South Bend, Washington -- we would be cutoff from the outside world!! We wouldn't be able to travel on US Highway 101 more than 1 mile to our west and no more than 3 miles to our north and east. Even the county roads that head south would present impassible barriers because we live in an area with bridges everywhere!
The most likely major climatic event that we would face here would be an earthquake with a tsunami. The tsunami would knock out our small harbor and so the ONLY way supplies could be brought in would be via helicopter. With so many bridges destroyed or damaged, it literally would take months before normal travel could be restored.
Chances are great that the majority of our bridges (over rivers, creeks, and sloughs) would suffer damage. This is an unfortunate fact in 2011 and would be a calamity in 2021 IF bridge inspections and retrofitting had been severely curtailed over the previous decade.
This is the kind of ugly scenario that can play out when politicians begin wielding the budget ax to "shrink government." A nation's infrastructure gets placed on the back burner and needed maintenance receives the short shrift. Many citizens will applaud such efforts until the day comes that the bridge on the edge of town becomes a bridge too far.
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