Bridge collapse in Washington

Neither, apparently, does AP in western Washington.

They've scrambled all night to cover this story ... props to the Skagit Valley paper for at least getting some timely photos.

 

The Jodi Arias trial is a bigger deal than this, I guess.
At least it is for all five people who care about it.

 

Not a road bridge, but the Big Bayou collapse in Mobile in 1993 killed 47 on an Amtrak train. Likewise, that bridge collapsed after being hit by a barge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bayou_Canot_train_disaster

 

Wow. Towing a barge at 2:45 a.m., in heavy fog?
I didn't know barges are kept moving after daylight hours.

 

FWIW, it doesn't sound like this was structural, just a trucker who didn't know his own dimensions.

As per the previous link:

While the cause of the collapse was being investigated, witnesses reported seeing a semi-truck with an oversized load crossing the bridge and striking the beams on the north end before the bridge collapsed.
"I saw it. I was less than 50 feet away from the truck when it hit it," witness Dale Ogden told KING 5. "I had just passed it in the fast lane southbound and it had an oversized load. It was approximately 12 feet wide and over 14 feet tall. It was in the slow lane when I came by...I was behind the flag car and in front of the truck in the other lane and I saw the whip - normally tells you how high they can clear - start hitting the bridge. I looked in my rearview mirror knowing this was not going to turn out well."
"I saw the truck strike the right corner of the bridge. It almost tipped the truck over but it came back down. It tipped it up to about a 30 degree angle to the left and it came back down on its wheels and almost instantaneously behind that I saw girders falling in my rearview mirror."

 

Interview with one of the drivers who wound up in the river. Calls it a "rough day".

 

Nobody pays attention to a bridge until they can't use it anymore. There is already talk that this will finally get a new bridge going between Portland and Vancouver, Wa. which has been stalled by bad design, various opposition by folks that don't want light rail and area residents and businesses impacted by construction.

 

I hope the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River is structurally sound. That would be a loooooong way to fall if it collapsed.

 

I had the same hope yesterday when I was driving across it -- and three other bridges in Portland.