As you no doubt know, the I-5 bridge collapsed between Mount Vernon, WA and Burlington, WA. We are fine. Traffic is going to be unbelievable for months. I-5 carries an unbelievable amount of traffic between Canada and the U.S.

There are only 5 or 6 bridges over the Skagit River. The river carries the 2nd largest amount of water in the state, after the Columbia. None of the other bridges is more than 2 lanes and many have weight restrictions.

Haven't heard the bridge story...

Any idea as to the cause?

The very preliminary news was that it was caused by an oversized truck load striking the bridge.

Just saw a news brief about it. Built in 1955 and "structurally obsolete". Wonder what kind of bridge inspection program is going to come of this?

Per past threads in an engineering forum http://www.eng-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=607 I regularly read, gusset plate/steel girder bridges (the one that collapsed) and including the Minnesota I-35 bridge that collapsed a few years ago have a number of vulnerabilities and some have had design flaws that have gone for years undetected...

The above engineering forum in time will likely have some hard data posted on the failure..

While a vehicle strike (a predictable possibility) is being cited as the cause, it will be interesting to see if the bridge already had other issues that allowed the strike to escalate to failure..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/washington/16bridge.html?_r=0

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...&as_rights=

and nobody wants to pay (taxes) for replacing/repairing aging infrastructure.

yep.. fracture critical bridge and evidence of prior vehicle strikes has been found in preliminary inspection. Detailed failure analysis reports, when available, should be interesting read.

built on the cheap years back to finish out the interstate system.. lots more of them around...

re: fracture critical bridges....


http://www.4nsi.com/assets/files/Bill-Nelson-Bridge-Inspection.pdf

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/26/washington-bridge-collapse-ntsb/2361505/

The cynical part of me is reving up...

Which political party is going to be tagged with this????

As a boss of mine once said about a ummm... sticky situation we had at work, the end result will boil down to who is best at throwing tur!ds and making them stick... of course being best usually means your court has an excess of them to pick up and throw.. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/zombie.gif" alt="" />

Always liked that description of "who to blame arguments" when the discussion should be how to fix the problem... <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/ignore.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/ignore.gif" alt="" />

Is this a serious question? Of course, since it's the Eisenhower Interstate System, it's Bush's fault...

We have one of those on Lake Lanier. I never go slow under it or on it...

With the current climate of blame game as opposed to creating solutions, I am some what wondering when politics will enter the picture. The winds had barely calmed when a Democrat Senator blamed the Oklahoma tornado on global warming skeptics.

The Minnesota bridge collapse should have been a wake-up call. In recent news, bridge repairs on the Oakland Bay Bridge were found to have faulty welds.