I realize that the title of this diary sounds a lot like a bad horror movie. Unfortunately it's not.
It's a direct quotation of the headline in today's edition of The Blade, Toledo, Ohio's daily newspaper.
You see, yesterday, a giant sinkhole the length and width of 2 cars, caused by the collapse of sewer tunnels, opened on one of Toledo's major streets and swallowed a car and its female driver.
The link to the story is here.
Continue reading below the fold for more details and comments.
The car's driver, fortunately, survived with only minor injuries. Ironically enough, she is the principal at Glendale-Feilbach elementary school, a school my mother taught at for over a decade before she retired.
Fortunately, this happened in Toledo, Ohio, and not in Florida. Here, falling into a sinkhole means only dropping a dozen feet or so. It doesn't mean you're never going to be seen again.
Still, I'm sure it was a scary experience. And, it happened on a major Toledo roadway, rendering it impassable for a week or more. It also means major money will have to be spent repairing it. That's not the worst part, though.
The worst part is what I'm about to quote you from the article:
City spokesman Jen Sorgenfrei said the sinkhole was caused by the collapse of combined sanitary and storm sewers. She called the break the largest in recent city history[...]The sewers — one 30 inches in diameter and the other 36 inches in diameter — were made of brick and constructed in 1891[...]A 6-inch cast-iron water main from 1895 was broken as the car and street asphalt fell into the hole, she said. “Since the beginning of the year, we have 515 sewer-system repairs,” Ms. Sorgenfrei said. “These are not necessarily sewer collapses. There are 68 active main complaints that need to be fixed and all of these, because we don’t have the money in the system to replace the mains, have been spot repairs.” Ms. Sorgenfrei said part of a damaged sewer could be repaired and then break in a nearby spot.
(emphasis added)
Our city (along with, I'm sure, many others around the country) is literally crumbling beneath us. We wait for our Federal and State government to provide money to help us shore up the city's crumbling infrastructure. It's hasn't come. It probably will never come, at least from our current government.
It's really not that complicated. Funding construction projects to build up our nation's crumbling infrastructure helps everyone. Jobs are created. People fill those jobs. Those people pay taxes. Those taxes go to fund government projects. Which creates more jobs. Which creates more taxpayers. It's a never-ending cycle of prosperity which only gets bigger the more often it happens. And, as an added bonus, things like sewer systems which haven't been replaced in more than a century get much-needed repairs.
The only people who don't seem to understand this are the obstructionist Republicans in government who continuously work to make sure this funding never happens.
I can't think of a stronger argument for removing Republican control of any branch of Government.