Shop OBEX P1 Docs P2 Docs Learn Events
I-5 Bridge Collapse at Skait River In Wa. State — Parallax Forums

I-5 Bridge Collapse at Skait River In Wa. State

NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
edited 2013-05-26 11:48 in General Discussion
A little over an hour ago we had breaking news that the Skagit River I-5 Bridge collapsed. Rescue efforts are underway. News shows a couple cars in the water. Major through fare north and south bound.

Comments

  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2013-05-23 21:09
    Washington State has the worst luck with its bridges, starting with Galloping Gertie:

    Then the Hood Canal bridge, which sank in a storm:

    090213_hood_canal_sinks.jpg

    Next came the I-90 bridge over Lake Washington:

    Now this:

    Skagitbridge_collapse.jpg

    If you're coming to visit Washington, watch out for our bridges!

    -Phil
  • LawsonLawson Posts: 870
    edited 2013-05-23 21:14
    Huh looks like as long as the water isn't too deep, a car protects as well from bridge collapse as it protects from collisions. Kind'a odd that the bridge failed after rush hour. The pictures make it look like a vertical brace failed causing the top beam to buckle. Did one of the cars hit it? Glad that it appears that nobody was killed.

    Lawson

    P.S. more pictures and what the bridge use to look like.
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2013-05-23 21:25
    Did one of the cars hit it?
    Latest report from an eyewitness is an oversized load truck that had pilot car in front of it hit it. Edit: No fatalities!!!!!!!!!!!
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-05-24 09:31
    When I worked on the Hanford Nuclear Area just north of Hanford, Washingtion we had one freeway overpass that was knocked down quite frequently by trucks that were loaded too high.

    That seems to be the case here too. Somebody is going to lose their trucker's license and maybe a trucking company is going out of business as well.
  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2013-05-24 09:41
    Had a failure in Connecticut in 1983 . ( Fifth picture down).

    Heavily traveled section of I-95 corridor between New York and Boston.
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2013-05-24 10:34
    Somebody is going to lose their trucker's license and maybe a trucking company is going out of business as well.
    Not to mention the Pilot car driver will also be out of work. I sure hope the company had a really good insurance policy!!!! Kind of makes you wonder "what good are pilot cars"????
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2013-05-24 10:42
    Okay, so maybe a car crash triggered the collapse, but it seems to me that bridges are supposed to be designed to withstand something like that. I'm guessing this bridge was on its way to sleep with the fishes sooner rather than later. Like so many others, the way things are going.
  • Dave HeinDave Hein Posts: 6,347
    edited 2013-05-24 10:52
    A truss-bridge owes it's strength to the fact that all of the forces are inline with the supporting members. However, if one piece get's bent the forces are no longer inline, and that section of the truss will fold up. It's like standing on an empty soda can. It can support a few hundred pounds until someone puts a small ding into the side, and then it collapses.
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2013-05-24 10:54
    No car crash. The top of the tractor trailer hit one of the upper supporting steel beams causing the whole thing to slowly collapse. The truck was down the road a ways before the thing collapsed. The bridge had just been inspected last November.
  • whickerwhicker Posts: 749
    edited 2013-05-24 12:30
    This isn't anywhere near the first instance I've heard of a pilot car driver failing to do his/her one and only job.
    I'd love to hear the weasel word explanation from the company, probably something like "well, our real job is just to merely alert drivers of your presence, those engineers should have measured every overpass beforehand just in case we failed to."

    Most notably, a coworker had a refinery stack project "extended" for another year because it was run into the top of an overpass. Because the pilot car "got stuck in traffic".
  • GenetixGenetix Posts: 1,754
    edited 2013-05-24 18:54
    Human Factors probably played a bigger role in this collapse than poor engineering. Who knows how well it was constructed, maintained, or monitored for loading (weight and number of vehicles).
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2013-05-24 19:10
    It's a truss bridge built in 1955. By today's standards, it's a sub-par design, prone to fail if any part of the structure is compromised -- as it was in this case when the cargo load smashed into a horizontal beam. IOW, truss bridges are strong enough when they're fully intact, but they do not have a lot of built-in redundancy against structural compromise.

    -Phil
  • bill190bill190 Posts: 769
    edited 2013-05-24 19:31
    The following story says normally the truck with the wide load would have driven down the center of the bridge (avoiding the beams which come down on the upper sides), however another truck suddenly passed it in the left lane forcing the truck to continue driving down the right lane (so they say...)

    http://mynorthwest.com/11/2281588/Trucker-with-wide-load-likely-cut-off-at-Skagit-bridge
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2013-05-24 19:52
    This is getting interesting. I have seen cases where the pilot car blocks oncoming access for this reason. So, who's to blame??????
  • CircuitBurnerCircuitBurner Posts: 21
    edited 2013-05-24 23:55
    of course it was human error....1st its Bush's fault.... (huffington post says so) 2nd, it was union labor....(fox news says so)
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-05-25 00:22
    I guess they don't build briges like they used to.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge
  • Beau SchwabeBeau Schwabe Posts: 6,566
    edited 2013-05-25 00:35
    Glad that nobody lost their life.

    Here in Oklahoma we try to take the bridges out before they can cause a real problem to make way for an improved bridge if necessary
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MYN0JwDQXWU#!
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-05-25 04:12
    whicker wrote: »
    This isn't anywhere near the first instance I've heard of a pilot car driver failing to do his/her one and only job.
    I'd love to hear the weasel word explanation from the company, probably something like "well, our real job is just to merely alert drivers of your presence, those engineers should have measured every overpass beforehand just in case we failed to."

    Most notably, a coworker had a refinery stack project "extended" for another year because it was run into the top of an overpass. Because the pilot car "got stuck in traffic".

    It is entirely up to the driver to make sure the load is not too high. If too high, don't go.

    The pilot car driver has no way of measuring height in transit of obstacles and compare them with an excessively high load. He has no way of measuring the load height, and it isn't his job anyway.

    In eastern Washington, we had a crane company with one freeway bridge between their yard and the site. Their drivers just didn't check the clearance before they got on the road and the results were that the one and only freeway overpass got in three times successively over a period of years.

    ~~~~~~

    At least this is not a failure of an interstate bridge due to improper inspection or maintenance. You can't keep foolish people from jumping in a vehicle without thinking what they are doing, but you can make sure the bridges are safe for normal traffic.

    Freeway overpasses get knocked out all the time, it is much rarer to take out an interstate bridge with a high load.

    ~~~~~~
    If they really needed to drive down a center lane and were forced out of it, there is a good case that they didn't have adequate escort and traffic control. One pilot car can do only so much on a 4 lane interstate.

    Also, the time that they were on the bridge may have been all wrong.
  • ajwardajward Posts: 1,130
    edited 2013-05-25 06:48
    I noticed a report, somewhere, earlier this morning that said the bridge span showed evidence of being hit before. (I'll try to find the link)

    Edit: Here it is: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/25/state-report-shows-5-bridge-had-gouges-impact-damage-months-ago/
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2013-05-25 08:31
    Who needs bridges anyway?
    Bridges are for sissies.
    We need to get this country back to the way it was before all this bridge-building future-oriented nonsense started to disrupt the way things were meant to be.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-05-25 10:07
    ElectricAye wrote: »
    Okay, so maybe a car crash triggered the collapse, but it seems to me that bridges are supposed to be designed to withstand something like that. I'm guessing this bridge was on its way to sleep with the fishes sooner rather than later. Like so many others, the way things are going.

    It seems it was designed pretty well. Why so? It failed slowly.

    One cannot afford to make all megastructures bulletproof, but when failure does occur, a slow one is better. People have time to get out of the way.

    I had to learn truss design for Statics and Strenghts of Materials in university. Each member has a role as a tensile or compresive member. The failure of one simply upsets the static stabilty and it all comes apart.

    ~~~~~~~`

    For comparision, a car might weigh all of 2 tons, but an 18 wheel semi is rated to max out at 80 tons, unless it is a special heavy load. 80 tons is a more to whack a bridge with.
  • W9GFOW9GFO Posts: 4,010
    edited 2013-05-25 11:54
    Loopy Byteloose wrote: »
    It is entirely up to the driver to make sure the load is not too high. If too high, don't go.

    The pilot car driver has no way of measuring height in transit of obstacles and compare them with an excessively high load. He has no way of measuring the load height, and it isn't his job anyway.

    Many pilot cars have "high poles" for just that purpose.

    Ultimately it is the driver's responsibility, he should have been in the center lane well before approaching the bridge. There is really no good excuse.

    Also, an 18 wheeler maxes out at 40 tons not 80.

    pilotcar.jpg
    pilotcar.jpg
    326 x 230 - 19K
  • Oldbitcollector (Jeff)Oldbitcollector (Jeff) Posts: 8,091
    edited 2013-05-25 12:26
    Beau Schwabe (Parallax) wrote: »

    Here in Oklahoma we try to take the bridges out before they can cause a real problem to make way for an improved bridge if necessary
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MYN0JwDQXWU#!

    Those are some really nice, neat, explosive cuts on that bridge. Professional demolition is pretty cool.

    Jeff
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-05-26 02:00
    W9GFO wrote: »
    Many pilot cars have "high poles" for just that purpose.

    Ultimately it is the driver's responsibility, he should have been in the center lane well before approaching the bridge. There is really no good excuse.




    pilotcar.jpg

    Corrected, 40 tons = 80 thousand pounds.

    These bridges do stand up well to taking direct hits from all sorts of high speed automobile collisions, but a vehicle that is 20x the autos mass just is too much.

    Driving an 18 wheeler is very serious business... always will be. Part of the problem is that each state has its own licensing examination standards for these big trucks. I had an Oregon Driver's License that permitted me to drive 18 wheelers and it was issued with just an added written exam. I never drove one, but I legally could throughout the USA.

    The Pacific North-west is full of kamakazi log truck drivers that just want to pull as many loads as they can in a day.
  • W9GFOW9GFO Posts: 4,010
    edited 2013-05-26 02:58
    Loopy Byteloose wrote: »
    Corrected, 40 tons = 80 thousand pounds.

    These bridges do stand up well to taking direct hits from all sorts of high speed automobile collisions, but a vehicle that is 20x the autos mass just is too much.

    Driving an 18 wheeler is very serious business... always will be. Part of the problem is that each state has its own licensing examination standards for these big trucks. I had an Oregon Driver's License that permitted me to drive 18 wheelers and it was issued with just an added written exam. I never drove one, but I legally could throughout the USA.

    That must have been a long time ago. When I got my first commercial license back in the '80s you had to be 21 to drive interstate. In the early '90s they switched to calling it a CDL. All states must meet federal standards for knowledge and skills tests. I can still legally drive an 18 (or more) wheeler, just in case. Not so many log trucks here in the metro area, lot of container haulers though.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-05-26 08:36
    Yep, 1970s. And in Oregon it was legal to drink beer while driving.. as long as you were not drunk.

    The world has changed... keeps changing as well.

    As the Chinese goes, "The roadway is like a tiger's mouth." I guess that hasn't changed.
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2013-05-26 11:48
    And in Oregon it was legal to drink beer while driving
    In Montana they still have " Go Cups" to pour your drink in when leaving the bar. In Louisiana they have drive through Daiquiri stands!!!!
Sign In or Register to comment.