I-5 Bridge Collapse

Saturday my son Lane and I flew up to see the Interstate 5 bridge that had collapsed Thursday evening. (You may have seen it on the national news, oversized semi load clipped several of the beams. Amazingly only 3 people injured.)
This happened where I-5 crosses the Skagit River in Mt Vernon. (About 100 miles north of my airport.)

Flew past Bellevue on the way north


Seattle in the background






I was surprised the vehicles were still in the river after 2 days. (Lot's of investigations I guess.)

Good pics. A sister lives in Bellingham and I first heard about this through her Facebook post. Could you see where traffic was being detoured?

Buggsy2 said:

Good pics. A sister lives in Bellingham and I first heard about this through her Facebook post. Could you see where traffic was being detoured?

Click to expand...

I'm unfamiliar with the area, but you can see a lot of cars and trucks going around on that other bridge to the East. They were detoured not all that far North and South of the bridge. Probably within a mile. (Everything looks pretty close when you're flying though)

I drove past

I drive a truck part-time and normally don't go that far north, but had a drop about 2 mile north of the bridge that delivered on Monday, Memorial Day. Detour went 2 blocks east, then across that new bridge in the pictures. It wasn't busy Monday, but I'll bet it is a nightmare on a regular workday.
It was reported that 70,000 vehicles per day cross that bridge. I could see the bridge clearly from the detour and they already had a barge with a crane tearing the steal apart to disposed of it. With the publicity, the feds will cough up the money to patch it in a couple of months and then build a replacement new bridge during the next year or two.
Side note: I drive truck so I can afford to fly the RV, two trips from Omaha, NE to Seattle area per month. (2 weeks) I am planning a west trip in the RV in September..... Iowa to Montana to Seattle to San Jose, CA to Rosamond, CA to Phoenix to home in 10-12 days. Only in an RV.....

Nice pictures, Jeff! Thanks for posting them. We were just having a family discussion about this. I hadn't seen any pictures before.