And the next time we tangent a thread I want someone to arctangent it back on topic.

Learned about the cab calling. He walked more than a mile through West Oakland streets before coming across a cab driver getting gas and convincing talking him into a trip to the hospital. He tried to pay at the hospital but the driver refused.

So, let's take that as a counter stereotype thing: You can walk a mile through West Oakland at 4 a.m. in the morning without coming to harm.

Just make sure you've already had some of your flesh burned off in a fiery accident

I think that has to be the single most amazing thing about the story. Screw the fact that a gasoline truck accident MELTED a freeway.

Although I remember when Richard Prior worked his famous cocaine accident into his routine: "When you are on fire, people get out of your way!"

Ha! Definitely.

I'm nowhere near Oakland but damn that would have been impressive.

Yes, so far the evidence is that it works only if you come pre-harmed.

I'm thinking this poor fella is going to be the most hated person in that area right now to all the comuters.

Well, maybe second only to President Bush.....

Well, the local news tore into him last night.

Turns out he has two arrests in the '70s and a possession conviction 10 years ago.

With all appropriate rage they tore heaven and earth asunder to find out how this malignant blight on society could possibly have slipped through the cracks and been issued a truck driving license as well as a hazmat endorsement.

The answer?

The law doesn't prohibit it and he passed all the tests.

How can such a failure of the bureaucracy be allowed to stand?!

The next step, of course, will be the blacked out, voice-altered interviews with truckers talking about how little they sleep and how much speed they do to make their runs on time.

Then . . . nothing.

At any rate, if the response to the Loma Prieta quake is any indication, this should all be fixed in 17, 18 years.

This guy was a local route driver so I imagine he gets normal sleep. KCBS this morning had a most inane segment this morning: "the Maze collapse has raised questions about the state of our infrastructure around the state." And then was a blowjob to some guy advocating more bond measures like were passed last fall.

Regardless of the merits of such bond measures I fail to see how this event raises questions about the state of our infrastructure and how more highway expansion projects would have helped. I'm pretty sure that if you ignite a full tanker trunk underneath just about any stretch of road in this state that you'll experience structural failures.

Strangler, on the other hand if Loma Prieta is an indication they should be able to replace a collapsed segment of road in a month (as they did with the Bay Bridge). Though it took about 11 years to replace the entire Cypress Viaduct.

As of this morning's commute the site is pretty well cleaned up. If it weren't for all the scorch marks that branch of road would just look like another off ramp to nowhere (there are already a couple of those in the maze).

And after the 94 Northridge earthquake, they were able to get collapsed overpasses of the I-10 freeway (a VERY busy artery in Southern California) opened within a few weeks.

Have the opened up the lower part - where the collapsed part fell ON to?