SENTINEL WATCH October 22, 2007 Issue

DISASTER—FAR FROM 'NATURAL'

DAVE HOHLE

THE 1-35W MINNEAPOLIS BRIDGE that collapsed on August 1 into the Mississippi River is already set for replacement. The winning bid was chosen for its balance of construction speed and cost, along with its technical quality and aesthetics (The New York Times, September 20, 2007). That recent news item caught my attention, and it pleased me to think that the new bridge will be beautiful as well as safe and functional.

That bridge collapse, which killed 13, as well as the more recent collapse of a bridge under construction in Hanoi, Vietnam, which claimed at least 64 lives, pushed me to think as well about the unsettling suggestion that catastrophe is an unavoidable fact of daily life—that structural failures occur without warning, and that we are generally vulnerable to unpredictable man-made and natural disasters. But what role can we each play in dismantling this presumption?

It seems to me that the inevitability of catastrophe, accident, natural disaster, and loss should be challenged, rather than accepted. Actually, even the term natural disaster could be viewed as an oxymoron. Disaster is far from natural, since God is everywhere, all power, and naturally good.

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