Author

Thomas Wiest

CEO, Aspirience Home Care

At 6:45pm on Wednesday evening I got an email from a colleague. She was asking if I was safe or at home with the family. I thought how sincere, how nice, but why? What’s going on? Obviously, there was something going on I was not aware of.

I was at my son’s basketball practice with my daughter helping the other coaches and players strategize the coming weekend games. My wife was out shopping. Yeah, we’re fine.

When I replied back that we we’re all OK and asked why, her exact email response was the following:

“35W bridge collapsed over the Mississippi at University, bumper to bumper traffic, many confirmed dead. So, happy you are SAFE with family.”

Honestly, I was paralyzed on the court from her email response. After a minute and the thought of what just happened settled in, I was blown away!

Immediately, I started searching mobile news stories on my phone. I couldn’t believe what I was reading nor the pictures I was seeing. Stuff like this doesn’t happen in Minnesota. This is something for either of the coasts, namely California where some sort of an earthquake would happen.

We all have so many connections with people around the Twin Cities: meeting with people in the south metro, north, downtown, etc. How could you not have traveled over that bridge at some point in time? How could you not have been affected some way, some how, to this tragic incident?

Needless, to say, the recovery efforts from all will be going on for a long time. There will be numerous people put in hospitals and maybe assisted living facilities while they recuperate and get better depending on their injuries and how self sustaining they can be with activities of daily living.

There’s going to be a gap in what they could do versus what they will be able to do now. It may take a while for them to get to where they feel their life is back to ‘normal’.

Again, our thoughts and prayers go out to all who have been affected by this tragedy.

It’s good to know, Aspirience Home Care can help you with home care whether it’s planned in advance or an emergency situation. We’re there to help!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 7:16 am and is filed under Home Care, Disabilities, Children, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.