Highway 580

On Sunday April 29, 2007, Californians witnessed a disaster unfold. Between the hours of the last call and the street sweepers, a gasoline tanker truck lost control, rolled, and erupted into flames on the lower overpass of Highway 580 at McCarthur.

I wasn’t at the scene. As I was driving across the San Mateo Bridge, the news on the radio reported the event. I haven’t been there yet, but the master photographer for the SF Chronicle has provided me ample viewing of the scene. There are photos of flames as they fought nature and mankind from being contained. The fire’s massive heat punched relentlessly at the higher overpass. I imagine hearing its snarl, snapping and biting at rock and dirt, angry because its true hunger is for something still living, still breathing. The metal, thought to be invincible, seems to scream as it is torn from its mooring and collapses, falling forward like one who has taken its last breath.

Other photos are viewed. What should be a colorful landscape with blue skies and sunshine, are instead layers of cement gray to grinding soot. Rigor has set on the once proud structure. It drapes the lower overpass like a death shroud. The expression "as hard as a rock" lacks meaning after this.