First of all, many thanks to Uncle Orvis for e-mailing me to explain about Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters. (And yes, I do have an Uncle Orvis. And no, he doesn’t publish a catalog.) Turns out the one I was worried about is connected to one in the basement that does have a reset button. Once I’d discovered that, it was for me but the work of a moment to get the bathroom outlet working again. This is important, because my renter uses it for his electric razor.

They’ve reduced the number of missing in the bridge collapse. This feels bizarre, but good. I don’t think anybody, when they first heard about the event, was in any doubt that the death toll would be in the dozens at least.

It appears that many lives were saved by gridlock. If I understand it properly, the fact that the road surface was being worked on meant that traffic had been bottlenecked to two lanes. Cars were crawling.

Because of that, when the bridge went, most of the cars fell straight down. It was shocking and terrifying, and often caused serious injuries, but in most cases it wasn’t fatal.

If traffic had been zipping along freely, the cars would have gone off the end one after another before reflex time kicked in, and would have piled up on top of each other down below, probably to have the bridge then fall on them.

But as it is, it looks like we’ll have a list of dead not much worse than what you might see in a very bad traffic pileup.

It’s tragic and horrible for those who’ve lost loved ones, needless to say. Our hearts and our prayers go out to all of them.

But there are lots of people alive and with their families tonight who might easily have not been. I’m grateful to God for that.

Have a good weekend.