The sky is falling

Did someone adjust gravity without telling me?

On Sunday, a half-metre chunk of concrete fell from a Montreal overpass (initial reports said it was a piece of the roof of the Lafontaine tunnel, which runs under the St. Lawrence River.)

On Monday, a concrete gutter fell off a Montreal highway overpass, reminiscent of the Concorde overpass collapse that killed five people last September. (It’s not just Montreal - two weeks ago, chunks of Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway fell - again. And who could forget March’s CN Tower icefall?)

On Tuesday, I got stuck on the King St. streetcar for about half an hour. Eventually, a bus came along to get us, and when I got home I found out what the holdup was: one block ahead, a 250-pound slab of concrete had fallen 50 storeys and crashed onto a rooftop.

On Wednesday, Satan rested.

On Thursday, it was pipes. A two-tonne pipe rolled off a truck on a Montreal overpass, killing two construction workers. And in New York City, a 15-foot pipe fell from a skyscraper near the World Trade Center site, plunging through the roof of a firehouse.

On Friday, I learned that Toronto’s new soccer stadium is raining bolts and fasteners during games. “We have found a total of six objects which fans have turned in to stadium staff,” Bob Hunter says. See, no need to worry. It’s only six measly bits of metal stuff that stop you from falling to your doom. And nothing ever really goes wrong with soccer stadiums, right?

I think I’m going to wear my bike helmet all day today.

Psst. Vote on my new Sky Is Falling poll in the sidebar over there and down a bit –>

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 05-18-2007 | 01:05 PM
Posted in: Rants