Washington State bridge collapse a wakeup call for all of the U.S. says transport safety board head (with video)

By Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun May 25, 2013

BURLINGTON, Wash. — The chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday that the bridge collapse in Washington state is a wake-up call for the U.S. “This is a really significant event and we need to learn from it, not just in Washington but around the country,” Debbie Hersman said after taking a boat ride on the Skagit River below the dramatic scene where a truck bumped against the steel framework, collapsing the bridge Thursday and sending two vehicles and three people falling into the chilly water. Investigators need to find out what happened in Washington state and if it could be repeated at similar bridges around the country, Hersman said. “At the end of the day it’s about preventing an accident like this,” she said. Her team will spend a week to 10 days looking at the bridge, talking to the truck driver whose vehicle hit it, and examining maintenance documents and previous accident reports. Other over-height vehicles struck the Skagit River bridge before the collapse, she noted. Investigators are using a high tech 3-D video camera to review the scene and attempt to pinpoint where the bridge failure began. Hersman does not expect the investigation to delay removal of debris from the river or work on a temporary solution to replace or repair the I-5 span. State and federal officials can, and will, work together on the investigation, she said. They’ll be watching for safety issues that could affect other bridges. “The results can be very catastrophic,” Hersman said. “We’re very fortunate in this situation.” Washington state officials said Saturday that it will take time to find both short- and long-term fixes for the bridge that collapsed on Interstate 5. While, the National Transportation Safety Board finishes its inspection, state workers will begin removing debris from the river. Next, a temporary solution will be put in place to return traffic to Washington state’s most important north-south roadway. The enormity of the collapse of the Skagit River bridge on the busy Interstate 5 corridor was just beginning to sink for both Americans and Canadians on Friday as they headed into the Memorial Day weekend, one of America's busiest holiday periods. Less than 24 hours after one of the bridge's four spans collapsed into the river on Thursday night when an Alberta truck driver carrying an oversized load crashed into a girder, roads around Burlington and Mount Vernon never meant for heavy traffic volumes were clogged with freight trucks and commuters. And the devastation and dislocation is not going to end any time soon. CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS FROM THE SCENE State politicians and federal investigators say the region — which includes a vital U.S.-Canada trade corridor — will have to get used to long and frustrating detours that could last for months as a fix is sought. Long marked on a national register as being "functionally obsolete", the northernmost span of the bridge lays in a crumpled heap in the river, knocked down after William Scott, 41, a truck driver from Camrose, Alberta, clipped several of the aging bridge's spans with the heavy drilling equipment he was hauling to Vancouver, Washington.

But even before recriminations had begun over how the accident occurred, there were questions about just how the state and the U.S. federal governments are going to literally bridge a divide that has wounded the Pacific Northwest's robust interstate commerce. The I-5 is one of America's busiest highways, stretching from southern California right to the Canadian border, a ribbon threading through almost all the major cities on the West Coast, from San Diego to Seattle. It links directly with Canada's Highway 99, and is a vital conduit for the goods and traffic that fuel the two countries' economic engines. It is the major direct link between Metro Vancouver and Seattle. As old as it was, and for as many complaints that truckers had about how it bounced and swayed when put under pressure, this was a vital bridge. Every day, it carried more than 70,000 vehicles, many of them commuters heading for the Seattle area. It also had its fair share of Canadian travellers, many of them shoppers drawn to the low prices of the factory outlet stores just south of the river. The destruction of a single, 160-foot span, 130 kilometres south of Vancouver, might not seem like a major problem, especially when there are diversions and detours in place that can, for the time being, keep a trickle of traffic flowing. But the fact that a single truck carrying an oversized load could strike the nearly 60-year-old bridge and so simply knock it into the river is perhaps a sign of just how fragile the U.S. highway network really is. Washington Governor Jay Inslee underscored that concern when he met with reporters on the banks of the Skagit mere hours after the accident. With the twisted wreckage of the floodlit span illuminated behind him, Inslee acknowledged that many of the state's bridges are in dire need of repair. Like most governments — and British Columbia is no different — Washington struggles with budget challenges that make it easier to put money into vote-popular education and health programs than into aging but critical infrastructure. "This is the arterial of commerce and industry for the entire state of Washington. It is job number-one for all of us," he said. "Obviously, we need to do an investigation to find out what happened here. That may take days and weeks. We have some work to do on our bridges whether or not this accident happened, and we will have some discussions in Olympia about making sure we make investments in bridges to prevent this from happening." It is a comment that will gain added weight in the days, weeks and months to come as parallel state and federal investigations look at how the bridge could so easily be knocked out. The impact on Canada-U.S. trade cannot be understated, according to U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington state. She worries about a prolonged closure. "We don't know the total assessment of this, but we do know that when we've had other incidents of I-5 being shut down for flooding or other cases, it is in the tens of millions of dollars of lost economic activity," she said. "We think of this as a region, the Seattle-Vancouver region, and we want the flow of goods and services to work very effectively."

Debbie Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference on Friday afternoon that it could take as long as a year to complete an investigation of the accident. Hersman said the bridge, a through-truss design called a "Warren Truss", was built in 1955. There are thousands of bridges across the U.S. of similar design and age. If during their investigation the NTSB identifies problems with the bridge that may affect other similar structures, it will issue interim orders to correct them, she said. The condition of U.S. bridges, many built decades, even half a century ago, is a growing issue. James Garrett, the dean of Carnegie Mellon University's college of engineering in Pittsburgh, says as many as one-quarter of the 600,000 bridges in the U.S. have been deemed "structurally obsolete" or "structurally deficient." "What they said about this bridge was that it wasn't classed as structurally deficient, but that it was functionally obsolete," he said. "What that means is it is too narrow, or doesn't have enough height over waterways, or things like that." It is an issue that just as easily applies to British Columbia's many bridges and roads, especially as TransLink wrestles with how to fund major necessary improvements such as the replacement of the aging Patullo Bridge over the Fraser River. Washington State transportation secretary Lynn Peterson said the bridge had been inspected annually. It was most recently inspected in November, after it was hit by another truck, and the damage was repaired. She said the bridge did meet national safety standards, and insisted that if engineers ever found a state bridge to be unsafe it would be immediately closed for repairs, regardless of where it was. She said Washington is scouring the entire U.S. to find a suitable Bailey bridge, the Second World War-era structures used for temporary crossings. Such a temporary structure was used on the Sea-to-Sky Highway several years ago when a flood knocked out one of the road's many bridges. If a Bailey bridge can be found, the Skagit crossing could be temporarily reopened within weeks, subject to passing an engineering inspection, Peterson said. But she also made it clear the state does not have the money for a new structure, and ultimately is only looking at replacing the one damaged span. Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste said the accident occurred in the most routine of ways — an oversized truck like the ones that travel the I-5 daily entered the bridge at the north end, clipping one side of the bridge girders. Within seconds, the span collapsed, taking with it at least two vehicles, including one towing a trailer. Three people were slightly injured, including an Oak Harbor couple and a Mount Vernon man who rode the bucking bridge deck 15 metres into the frigid river. Only one of the three remains in hospital with minor injuries. Ed Sherbinski, vice-president of Calgary-based Mullen Trucking, which owned the truck Scott was driving, told The Edmonton Journal that four company inspectors are travelling to Washington to be part of the investigation. He said Washington State had given the company a permit, saying the truck would fit over the bridge.

"We take this very, very seriously," Sherbinski said. "We have a stellar safety record and all our resources are on this now." He said a lead truck typically drives in front of such heavy loads, equipped with a high-reaching electronic pole that sends signals to the other driver if the pole touches any guide wires or support structures. Sherbinski said he doesn't know how high the pole was compared with Scott's vehicle, but it usually reaches "significantly" higher. Mike Allende, a state Department of Transportation spokesman, confirmed the truck had a permit. "We're still trying to figure out why it hit the bridge," Allende said. "It's ultimately up to the trucking company to figure out whether it can get through." State officials approved the trucking company to carry a load as high as 15 feet, 9 inches, according to the permit released by the state. However, the southbound vertical clearance on the Skagit River bridge is as little as 14 feet, 9 inches, state records show. The bridge's curved overhead girders are higher in the centre of the bridge but sweep lower toward a driver's right side. The bridge has a maximum clearance of about 17 feet, but there is no signage to indicate how to safely navigate the bridge with a tall load. The permit specifically describes the route the truck would take, though it includes a qualification that the state "Does Not Guarantee Height Clearance." Scott's wife, Cynthia Scott, said her husband had all the correct permits and at least 20 years of trucking experience. He had driven that same route before, she said. "He's doing OK, best as he can," Scott said from her Spruce Grove home. She spoke with her husband seconds after the collapse. "He looked in the mirrors and it just dropped out of sight. . . . He was just horrified." Batiste said Scott appeared to have all the right permits and was using a pilot vehicle, but more investigation is required to determine if the trucker was obeying all the conditions of his license. Scott also submitted to a drug and alcohol test. For now, there is no indication how long it will take to repair or replace the bridge. Inslee estimated it may cost $15 million. In the meantime the federal government has said it will contribute $1 million in emergency funding to remove the wreckage from the river. Mark Green, the associate head of civil engineering at Queens University, estimated it could take upwards of two years to replace the bridge and doesn't believe, at first blush, that the remaining spans can be saved. "I think you are looking at having to build an entirely new bridge," he said. Green said bridges are hit by trucks more often than people think. But it is rare for a bridge to be brought down by an accident like this. In this case it is possible that the older design led to a catastrophic failure if the truck damaged more than one of the steel members, he said.