Year After I-5 Bridge Collapse, NTSB Close to Releasing Final Report

This story appears in the May 19 print edition of Transport Topics.

A year since the headline-grabbing collapse of a Washington state bridge on Interstate 5 after it was struck by a truck, federal safety investigators are set to disclose findings of just how the crash happened.

The National Transportation Safety Board said its investigation of the Skagit River bridge in Burlington is in the “final stages.”

NTSB’s final report is expected to show what really happened, said Peter Knudson, a public affairs officer at the agency.

Ed Scherbinski, president of Mullen Trucking, told Transport Topics on May 9 that he is eagerly awaiting the report because “probably more than anybody we want to see what really happened.”

The crash was “a big shock to our company and to me personally,” Scherbinski said.

“This is the first time that something like this has ever happened to the company. You read about it every day in the paper, and you think, if something is going to happen, it’ll happen to somebody else, not to you,” he said. “We tried so hard to follow the rules, to do everything safely, to go above and beyond of what is required, to do it safely, and yet it still happened.”

So far, what’s known about the May 23, 2013, incident, based on NTSB’s preliminary report, is that about 7 p.m., a driver hauling an oversize load for Mullen, based in Aldersyde, Alberta, hit the overhead portal and multiple sway braces on the far right side of the bridge. The truck was following an escort car with a pole raised to the height of the load.

Witnesses who spoke to NTSB said as both vehicles approached the bridge, another southbound truck passed the oversize load in the left lane. That caused the Mullen driver to feel “crowded” by the passing vehicle so he moved to the right and collided with the overhead portal and multiple sway braces, according to the report.

A section of the bridge fell into the water, along with several other vehicles, but there were no fatalities.

After the crash, Scher-binski said the company took steps to improve safety precautions to ensure “everything is done properly” to avoid such an accident again.

The bridge collapse led to traffic detours between Burlington and Mount Vernon, Washington, causing lengthy delays to truckers and other motorists. The bridge reopened Sept. 15, after crews installed a new permanent span, using a system that included jacks and steel rails to slide out a temporary span opened in June, the state Department of Transportation said. The project was funded largely by a $15.6 million federal emergency grant.

About 71,000 vehicles use the bridge daily, according to the state DOT, to travel between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia. Commercial trucks make up 11% of the traffic.

Kristen Keltz, president of the Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce, said a year after the collapse that a sense of normalcy finally has returned to the suburban area an hour north of Seattle.

Washington DOT officials have reported no complications since the new span was installed, and they said there are no plans to replace the bridge outright with a new one anytime soon, despite its outdated design.

Jim Tutton, vice president of the Washington Trucking Associations, agreed the new span is working properly but said the collapse failed to spark a sense of urgency to prompt a statewide makeover of aging bridges around the state.

“There’s always room for upgrades of the highway system in Washington, so we’d like to see that. But that takes dollars, and dollars are very short at the moment,” Tutton said.

At the state and federal levels, there’s not enough money to back certain large-scale infrastructure projects, primarily because the federal Highway Trust Fund account is running out of money.

The collapsed bridge, built in 1955, is deemed “functionally obsolete,” meaning its design is outdated.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, about 36% of Washington state’s bridges are more than five decades old and struggle to handle current demands.

Washington has 1,548 bridges that are classified as functionally obsolete because they either do not meet current traffic demands or their design standards are outdated.

ASCE noted in a 2013 report that “infrastructure must become a priority in order to provide the foundation for economic success.”

But without a significant boost from the federal government, ASCE President Randy Over said, the nation’s infrastructure will continue to “deteriorate, causing a negative ripple effect throughout our economy.”