Governor of Washington Jay Inslee told reporters on Friday they are considering using a Bailey Bridge as a temporary fix for the I-5 bridge after part of it collapsed on Thursday night.
Two cars with three people inside plunged into the river when a truck hauling an oversized load of drilling equipment hit an overhead bridge girder.
“The number one goal is to try and restore the bridge, either temporarily or permanently,” said Inslee. “For a temporary fix we need a structure that will span 160 feet.”
He said engineers are scouring the country to look for a Bailey Bridge, a portable truss bridge.
This type of bridge was first developed by the British during WWII, and were used by both the British and the Americans. Bailey Bridges require no special tools or heavy equipment to build.
Inslee also wanted to stress that residents and visitors will need to exercise patience while the repairs to the I-5 bridge are taking place.
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“We are working with the cities affected to find a good detour,” he said.
Inslee noted there are four bridges within 10 miles of the one that collapsed, that all cross the Skagit River.
He went on to thank all the emergency services and rescue crews that responded to the incident on Thursday night, and reminded the public all the stores are still open during this time.
Comparing the I-5 Skagit Bridge to the major bridges in the Lower Mainland, Dr. Perry Adebar, professor of structural engineering at UBC, said I-5 bridge is very different.
“The Skagit River is shallow and wide at the location of the crossing and therefore the bridge has numerous closely-spaced piers built into the river,” he said in a statement. “The bridge is really like a number of small short-span bridges one after the other. The distance between the bridge deck and the water level is very small and therefore the structure of the bridge is mostly above the bridge deck. These two factors, which are important for understanding the collapse, are also the reason that the people that fell with the bridge were not killed – they fell a very short distance into shallow water.”
“If one member in a light steel truss is badly damaged, the entire span has a high change of collapse. In summary, the I-5 Skagit River Bridge, while an important bridge on Highway I-5, is from an engineering perspective, the type of old small bridge we might find on a rural road in BC. None of the important bridges in the Lower Mainland have the same characteristics that made this bridge so susceptible to collapse due to a mistake by the driver of an over-sized vehicle.”
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