Seattle KOMO News — The Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River collapsed Thursday evening, dropping three vehicles into the water and injuring at least three people.
Rescue crews in at least three boats were able to pull three people from the semi-submerged vehicles, which are tangled in the wreckage of the bridge. All three were taken taken to a local hospital and the extent of their injuries is not known. Nobody was killed in the collapse.
Bart Treece with the Washington State Department of Transportation was unsure when the bridge was last inspected. “All of our bridges in the area are pretty old,” he said.
The bridge is not considered structurally deficient but is listed as being “functionally obsolete” – a category meaning that their design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders are low clearance underneath, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.
The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.
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