Minnesota is starting to feel like Louisiana with one disaster after another.
The news days of August 2007 started with the fall of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis and continued over the past weekend with the multiple flash floods in southeast Minnesota.
In one southeast Minnesota valley, the town of Houston had built a dike system and suffered minimal damage over the weekend. A few miles away, the town of Rushford had no dike protection and the town suffered significant flood damage.
Monday night a disaster of a smaller scale struck in Willmar when a significant thunderstorm dropped several inches of rain and overwhelmed the storm sewer system.
The neighborhood around the 10th Street and Kandiyohi Avenue Southwest intersection was flooded with several feet of water. Numerous basements suffered water damage, including some in the downtown business district. This is not the first time this type of flooding has happened in this southwest Willmar neighborhood.
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There is no 100 percent guarantee against those rare times of nature when the infrastructure is overwhelmed or simply fails. However, Minnesota has historically been able to respond appropriately.
Gov. Pawlenty Tuesday estimated that the user cost from the loss of the I-35W bridge totals $400,000 per day.
Minnesota must find a way to quickly and adequately repair the infrastructure of the I-35W bridge as well as in southeastern Minnesota.
