Truck crashcaused bridge collapse, say officials

A car and a truck rest in the water underneath the Northbound I-5 Bridge in Mt. Vernon on Friday. A truck hauling an oversized load struck an overhead bridge girder on the Interstate 5, sending a section of the span and two vehicles into the Skagit River on Thursday.

Reuters/Mount Vernon, Washington

The truck, after the accident, rumbled across the bridge safely before a portion of the structure gave way, sending a car and pick-up into the frigid river on Thursday evening, along with a mass of concrete and steel. Three people were rescued.

While no one was killed, the collapse of the steel truss bridge built in 1955 prompted renewed calls from lawmakers in Washington, DC and elsewhere for greater investment in the nation’s ageing infrastructure.

But Washington state officials said preliminary indications were that the bridge, which was inspected twice last year, was not structurally deficient and fell because of the impact from the truck striking its support beams.

“We had a collision between a very heavy vehicle travelling at probably not a small amount of speed crashing into not just one but probably multiple girders, and it failed,” Governor Jay Inslee told a press conference in Mount Vernon.

Officials say the bridge, 55 miles (90km) north of Seattle, was not among the spans listed by the state as “structurally deficient,” which in some cases relates to bridges that cannot carry their intended traffic loads.

But the privately run National Bridge Inventory Database listed the bridge as “functionally obsolete,” widely defined by public officials as not built to current standards and demands.

“Based on our inspecting, the bridge is not structurally defective,” said Lynn Peterson, state secretary of transportation. “We do take hits on almost every one of our bridges. This is just bad luck where and how it was hit.”

She said there were a number of bridges along Interstate 5 in Washington state rated lower than the bridge that collapsed.

A new bridge that suffered a similar blow would have likely reacted the same way, Washington State Department of Transportation spokeswoman Jan Katzenberger said.

US National Transportation Safety Board investigators were on the scene of the collapse, which occurred on the four-lane Interstate 5, the principal highway between Seattle and Vancouver, Canada.

The NTSB said its members would inspect the 1,111-ft (339-m) Warren Truss bridge, which links Mount Vernon and Burlington, including its substructure, deck and superstructure. Underwater inspections would also be conducted, the agency said.