Looks like a lot of rust under that paint. I wonder how much more is under other bridges' paint. Should a truck be able to take out that steel so easily?
This bridge wasn't designed to handle localized failure, like it may have been today. It isn't that they couldn't design it that way back then, they just didn't. So, if that truck took out something significant, it could lead to a major failure, as appears to be the case. Kind of a house of cards if you will, take out one card, the whole things fails.
It looks to me like one of the cross members near the bank may have been the one that was hit, which braces the top chord of the truss. Without that brace the top chord could buckle. Looking at the photos that looks like what happened, but there was damage in the fall too. Most of the top chord is intact except at one of the joints closer to the end.
We'll find out soon enough. I feel pretty bad for anyone who had to cross that bridge as a regular part of life, there will be a lot of people sacrificing a lot of extra hours in their life detouring the bridge.
I find it a bit optimistic to hear the media and even DOT talking about a fix "within weeks", that just seems pretty crazy to me. There is so much work to be done in just a temporary repair, let alone something permanent. If that bridge is reopened by Labor Day I'll be impressed.
The Mississippi bridge failure was on a larger scale but it would be instructive to consider the timeline for that project when thinking about how soon we can expect the Skagit bridge to reopen.
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