Victim in bridge collapse was an RV'er!

I haven't had much chance to follow the story. What the heck was the 18 wheeler carrying that was enough to bring down the bridge?

GMT830 wrote:
I haven't had much chance to follow the story. What the heck was the 18 wheeler carrying that was enough to bring down the bridge?

I could click the links, read the stories and report back to you, but I'm afraid that we are a little busy this holiday weekend also :)

Thanks for the link rockhillmanor. I didn't catch that he was pulling a trailer from what I saw on television. They were one lucky couple.

GMT830 wrote:
I haven't had much chance to follow the story. What the heck was the 18 wheeler carrying that was enough to bring down the bridge?

I heard something about it on the radio, I thing a boat struck the bridge supports which was enough to weaken the bridge so it could not support an 18 wheeler.

silvercorvette - A semitruck was carrying a high load and part of it struck some upper overhead members of the bridge structure causing the span to buckle and fall into the river. The pickup and trailer were too close behind the semi to stop in time and fell into the river. No boat struck the bridge causing weakness that I've heard about.

The semi barely clipped a 'top' rail on the bridge. But preliminary investigation showed the supports 'below' failed. He immediately stopped when the bridge collapsed behind him.


Watched a 2 hour VERY DISTURBING program how all our bridges have reached or exceeded how many years they were designed to last. Shocking percentage of them receive yearly DOT poor ratings and 'many' rated obsolete (unfixable). But remain open. We've had a bridge collapse almost every year now.

It's a crisis. We are still allowed to drive on bridges rated poor because there are no funds to fix them, and no founds to remove them and erect new ones. And it is impossible to just close them because of traffic needs.

DOT..
More than 25 percent of the Nation’s 600,000 bridges are rated as
structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. More than 30 percent of existing bridges have exceeded their 50-year theoretical design life and are in need of various levels of repairs, rehabilitation, or replacement.is issue is exacerbated by increasing travel demands, limited funding, and increasing costs of labor and materials.

Yup they nailed it last year when they said our infrastructure was in SERIOUS trouble.
Sadly it's like Russian roulette for us. They don't paint the DOT rating across the top of the bridges and they sure as hell are not going to paint the DOT rating "this bridge has been rated as obsolete" on the ones that are. Bridges that are unstructurally sound remain open across the USA.

Google your home town you WILL be shocked! :B

Reading a news report this morning - it revealed that the bridge was inspected in Nov 12 because of another truck hitting parts of it. The inspection determined there were only minor repairs needed. Those repairs were put on a "to do list".
The trucker that hit this time HAD A PERMIT for that route from the state. It appears that the curved design of the bridge causes problems as the height clearance is in the middle of the bridge. The article went on to say that there is 15-25 bridge hits per year in the state of Washington and that this is not a new problem.

We can't afford to fix our infrastructure because government would rather give our money to foreign countries that hate us and to buy voters in this country. And the elected officials need to fill their pockets first! :M

tvman44 wrote:
We can't afford to fix our infrastructure because government would rather give our money to foreign countries that hate us and to buy voters in this country. And the elected officials need to fill their pockets first! :M

The first thing I've heard coming out of S.W. Louisiana in a while that makes perfectly good sense.:W:B

In the thread about this, in ATC; someone linked to two articles. Those articles showed pictures of the bridge, and I couldn't help but notice that there was red or rust-colored paint at most of the points where the steel failed. But the pictures were taken immediately after the bridge fell, so that paint was there BEFORE the collapse! Clearly, they knew where the weak points were - all it took was the hit from the truck (I heard it was a "container" - those big steel cargo containers? - that was on the back of the truck in question?)

I'm So glad this couple survived something like that!!