By RALPH SURETTE \u00a0in the Halifax, NS, Chronicle-Herald<\/p>\n
Sat, Nov 13 – 2:27 PM<\/p>\n
I was playing pool with some buddies in Carl\u2019s shed in Tusket on Tuesday night, when Gordon said, “What\u2019s that rumble \u2014 is that a big truck?” We checked the window. No truck.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, Eddie got a call. His face went stiff and his eyes darted. The Tusket bridge, a half kilometre upstream, had collapsed.<\/p>\n
What!? When we arrived, there was a lineup of cars plus a large flatbed truck with a road machine on board \u2014 all within minutes of crossing the ill-fated structure.<\/p>\n
While we absorbed the shock of something that was such a solid part of the landscape for a century being gone in a minute \u2014 Premier Darrell Dexter would call it “incomprehensible” the next day, an apt word \u2014 the question arose as to whether there had been anyone on the bridge, now washed down the dark and ferocious turbulence.<\/p>\n
No one was, and that part of it, at least, ended happily, if not miraculously.<\/p>\n
After a storm wiped out a much smaller bridge and cut off Meat Cove at the opposite tip of the province in September, not to mention the extra damage in Yarmouth County and beyond now, the rest of it is not so happy. How far does the whole story extend?<\/p>\n
In fact, finishing our game back at Carl\u2019s, when the conversation resumed it wasn\u2019t about the collapsed bridge, but about a bigger one downriver that\u2019s been the subject of macabre joking among us for some time \u2014 as to whether the boys would make it back for another round of pool or not.<\/p>\n
Half the gang come from Surette\u2019s Island, place of my distant relatives. It\u2019s attached to the mainland by a one-lane steel truss-and-suspension bridge twice as long as the collapsed one \u2014 nearly 200 metres in three spans over a tidal sluice. It was a local marvel when built in 1908. But now?<\/p>\n
Along with everybody else in Surette\u2019s Island, and the community of Morris Island which is attached to it by a small bridge, my friend Warren (Surette \u2014 need you ask?), a welder by trade, has been fretting about it for years.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s peeled off thick slabs of rust by the fistful, rattled the old railing that\u2019s coming loose, listened to the whole thing shake as heavy equipment goes through, wondered how long the old iron can take it and muttered more than once: “If something happens, I hope it\u2019s not to a school bus.”<\/p>\n
If something happens, unlike Tusket which has a handy detour, some 250 people would be completely cut off.<\/p>\n
The province is working on it. The plan is for a new bridge in 2012 \u2014 but with a policy condition that keeps locals skeptical: “If the money can be found.” It won\u2019t be cheap \u2014 in the vicinity of $10 million.<\/p>\n
Transport Department engineers have checked it and declared it sound. But the Tusket bridge was checked and looked sound hours before it collapsed. As we left, Billy quipped: “J\u2019ai peur de m\u2019en aller”\u2014 I\u2019m afraid to go home (over the bridge). This time, I wasn\u2019t sure he was joking.<\/p>\n
Antique infrastructure and worsening conditions. The province has two big policies about to come out that relate to this \u2014one on transportation infrastructure, another on forestry and natural resources, plus another in the works on coastal protection.<\/p>\n
The last one first. As far as I\u2019m concerned, the massive clearcutting in the interior has contributed to the ferocity of the flooding.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve ever cruised the interior clearcuts in Nova Scotia, wherever it\u2019s hilly, the roads are a mess of washed-out ditches and culverts, as clearcuts hold little water and water flushes down in spate.<\/p>\n
Washed-out bridges and highways are the downstream version of that. If the new forest policy has nothing on that, I suggest they crank it back and find something to say.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I\u2019ve been waiting for the transportation policy for different reasons. The plan is to put highways and bridge work on a scientific footing.<\/p>\n
Money is to go where it\u2019s needed according to certain norms rather than according to political influence.<\/p>\n
Since corrupt roads politics goes back to the British founding of Nova Scotia, and almost resulted in the removal of a sitting premier as little as 15 years ago \u2014 grassroots Liberals were furious as John Savage refused to fire Tory foremen on highways work when he took office \u2014 highways work is at the symbolic core of the meaning of the NDP overthrow of the old party system.<\/p>\n
Such a policy, if accepted by the public, would help advance the cause of confidence in our politics.<\/p>\n
My buddies, for example, tend to believe that if their bridge was in Cape Breton, it would be replaced by now. In keeping with general western Nova Scotia opinion, the notion is that we don\u2019t protest loudly enough down this way and get less.<\/p>\n
Yet, even if the transportation policy was about to even all that out, it too may be outdated even before it comes out because of the ferocity and frequency of storms, not to mention the higher tides (there was damage from those too in the recent storm), all related to global warming \u2014 deniers and conspiracy nuts to the contrary.<\/p>\n
The new question is: What new standards of construction do you apply if you\u2019re going to assume that you\u2019re building something, like the Surette\u2019s Island bridge or even the doomed Tusket bridge, that\u2019s going to last a century?<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, my other buddy Darrell, getting a helicopter view and facing a new reality, seemed shell-shocked by it all \u2014 no doubt thinking of the 550 or so other bridges in the province, many of them antiques, how much climate mayhem is yet to come, and how much it\u2019s going to cost.<\/p>\n
Questions for all of us.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.trepa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Photo.jpg\" "\\"Photo\\"")
<\/a>Clearcuts near Canaan in the Tusket River watershed<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By RALPH SURETTE \u00a0in the Halifax, NS, Chronicle-Herald Sat, Nov 13 – 2:27 PM I was playing pool with some buddies in Carl\u2019s shed in Tusket on Tuesday night, when Gordon said, “What\u2019s that rumble \u2014 is that a big … Continue reading