Just before Memorial Day weekend, a bridge on Interstate 5, north of Seattle suddenly collapsed sending cars and people into the freezing water 50 feet below. The collapse was captured on a surveillance camera from a nearby business. Looking at the video footage, it was clear that the collapse happened in a matter of seconds with no warning.
Prior to the collapse, cars and trucks passed over the bridge at an average rate of 71,000 per day with no reported problems other than a wide load on a truck that had struck a steel beam. The damage from the wide load was relatively small in reference to the superstructure of the bridge, so how could this happen? In a nation filled with engineers, on a federally regulated highway, on a bridge that has inspections every two years, how could it be that no one was made aware of any danger?