Bridge Collapse I5 Skagit River WA
 

SKAGIT COUNTY, Wash. —
Both north and southbound lanes of the Interstate 5 Skagit River Bridge collapsed Thursday evening, and the State Patrol said multiple vehicles and people are in the water.
The collapse shortly after 7 p.m. south of Burlington and north of Mount Vernon.
Traffic is stopped in both directions and drivers are being advised to stay away from the area. The bridge, built in 1955, was used by 70,000 vehicles daily, according to 2010 statistics.

Ah ****, this cannot be good.

Bridge collapse Washington Interstate 5 | www.kirotv.com

http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/l...e_collapse.jpg


KT

Damn. I wonder if it was recently inspected? After the MN bridge collapse a few years ago, all of our bridges were inspected. It actually led to a number of them being closed until repairs could be made, and some were eventually replaced.

News says inspected in 2011, and was on the structurally deficient list.... with 140+ other bridges in the state.

Who runs that state?

But then a different source says this:
The bridge, built in 1955, was classified by the National Bridge Inventory as “functionally obsolete” in both 2000 and 2010. But the Washington Department of Transportation does not list it among its list of “structurally deficient bridges.”

Boy that's gonna fck traffic up, I'll tell ya. There are other crossing points east of there but man what a mess. Been across that bridge at least a quadrillion bazillion times.

Oh for god sake.......:rolleyes:

Multiple reports that a truck pulling an oversize load was too tall, and struck the upper super structure of the bridge.

Witness recounts oversized truck striking bridge | KING5.com Seattle

Just read an AP article that said no fatalities, three taken to hospitals. When I read "bridge collapse" I feared much worse.

dang, stuck in the north, that going be a mess for months

Who runs that truck ? :rolleyes:

Very fortunate that no one was killed.

That's still not good, a truss structure should have some redundancy to it, especially a bridge. I'm glad to hear nobody was killed, that's scary stuff.

Looks like a portion of it got knocked off it's bearings and just fell off the abutment. Scarey stuff.

Some of these older truss bridges are fracture critical, that is, the sudden separation of a major element in the structure can cause complete collapse. That can't be cured by maintenance, only in the design phase. Could be what happened here. A good example of a bridge just waiting to fall down is the Tappan Zee bridge over the Hudson north of NYC.

I arrived in Seattle yesterday afternoon for a meeting this AM in Bellingham. No go now so will have to try a Webex presentation. I hate doing those things but prefer it over sitting in traffic for hours. It's going to be a mess, just in time for the holiday weekend.

I'm just glad it wasn't one of our trucks that hit the bridge this time. (and that nobody died)

Well, the good news is that you don't have to go to Bellingham... ;)

Sounds like a job for the Combat Engineers and a Bailey Bridge.