www.roanoke.com

That might be the headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion.

But this is no satire.

Roanoke Mayor David Bowers Tuesday during a city council retreat compared a rodent infestation in the City Market Building to the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the world, and deadliest attack on Americans ever on our own soil.

"To me, it's very much like 9/11, I guess, in the sense that you had this catastrophe and people had to have hope after it," Bowers said.

Ok, we see the parallel. Something bad happened - and in a relative sense, it is arguably a catastrophe - and we all need to pull together, have hope for recovery and move forward.

But let's examine what happened. Let's look at the data.

On 9/11, three planes hijacked by terrorists, who had planned for years, flew at about 500 mph into three of the biggest buildings in the world, killing nearly 3,000 innocent people. A fourth hijacked plane crashed to the earth, killing everyone on board. Firefighters and police died as heroes trying to rescue who they could. Children were orphaned, men and women widowed.

On 9/19, the city market building was closed because of mice and their feces. No apparent heroes of the crisis have emerged. No one died.

After 9/11, the federal government shut down airports. No planes flew. People were stranded far from their families. Airlines lost millions of dollars.

After 9/19, the City Market remained closed for weeks, causing serious damage to the reputations and incomes of 10 small business owners. People could not get their favorite Cuban sandwich or a Styrofoam box of General Tso's chicken.

$4 billion to $6 billion. That's the estimated payout of government compensation to 9/11 victim's families.

$49,000. That's the city's tally so far of clean-up and repair in the Market building, including inside vendors' stalls, for which the vendors will be billed. It also includes 250 mouse traps put out each day for a week after the closing.

This is not to diminish the damage of this to the restaurant owners who are losing money, and whose futures remain in question - from lost sales, lost reputation and still outstanding questions of whether they have a place in the city's plans for the building going forward. Nor the damage to the reputation of the building itself, a centerpiece of the market area.

This is a serious news story, worthy of public discussion and warranting scrutiny of everyone involved, from the landlord (the city) to the vendors (a number of whom have disturbing track records on cleanliness issues unrelated to rodents).

A building owned by the taxpayers and managed by the city government, home to 10 popular restaurants in the center of our most popular and heavily trafficked tourist destination, is suddenly closed because of a rodent problem that reduced it to a community health hazard and the city manager herself makes a statement that omits that central fact.

But the mayor's point is, we need hope.

We need to rally.

We need to show our adversaries that despite the catastrophe, our dining life can, nay, must go on as usual.

Don't let the mice win!

UPDATE:

Bowers called Roanoke Times city hall writer Mason Adams this afternoon and said when he read the quote in The Roanoke Times today, he had a “gut-wrenching reaction” which prompted him to issue the following statement:

“I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my comments regarding the city market building and the 9/11 catastrophe. In no way did I mean to imply the calamity we’re witnessing at the city market is in any way comparable to the tragic loss of life and terrorism of the 9/11 catastrophe. I’m very sorry for any connection in that regard.

“What I was trying to imply was that no matter what problem we face, including this calamity at the city market building, when we get beyond a certain point we need to try and rebuild confidence and have hope and try to demonstrate some success.”