BREAKING: A section of the Interstate 5 bridge over Skagit River has collapsed

Break­ing, huge­ly con­se­quen­tial news out of Skag­it Coun­ty tonight: A sec­tion of the Inter­state 5 bridge over the Skag­it Riv­er near Mount Ver­non has col­lapsed, accord­ing to the State Patrol and eye­wit­ness reports on Twitter.

The Seat­tle Times has an even more remark­able pho­to.

The struc­tur­al fail­ure occurred just before 7 PM, the State Patrol said. The Skag­it Coun­ty Sher­iff said at least three peo­ple had been res­cued from the water.

The dis­as­ter has affect­ed both north and south­bound lanes of trav­el and made I‑5 com­plete­ly impass­able between Seat­tle and Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia. Traf­fic is now being rerout­ed by the State Patrol; there have been huge traf­fic back­ups in both direc­tions. Traf­fic is being detoured to High­way 9 to the east.

A Patrol spokesman says that Gov­er­nor Inslee and Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Peters have been noti­fied; the spokesman indi­cat­ed they were both enroute to the area.

(UPDATE: The gov­er­nor’s office has now con­firmed to NPI and oth­er media that Gov­er­nor Inslee is head­ed to Skag­it Coun­ty with Sec­re­tary Peterson).

Every major Seat­tle tele­vi­sion sta­tion has bro­ken into its reg­u­lar pro­gram­ming to car­ry live feeds. KOMO has a heli­copter on scene already and KIRO and KING are expect­ed to have their own chop­pers over the scene shortly.

A 2008 report cat­e­go­rized the bridge as “struc­tural­ly sound and safe”. Obvi­ous­ly, the bridge’s fail­ure makes it painful­ly appar­ent this was not the case.

The bridge has also been clas­si­fied as obso­lete, but it had not been list­ed by the state as struc­tural­ly defi­cient, con­trary to what some peo­ple have said on Twitter.

Pho­tos and videos show that sev­er­al oth­er sec­tions of the bridge remain stand­ing — the col­lapse only brought down one sec­tion. It is one of last sec­tions over the water.

Res­cuers have been work­ing to pull affect­ed motorists out of the water. Police, fire, and para­medics are all on the scene, and a med­ical heli­copter has evi­dent­ly been employed to fer­ry injured peo­ple to hospitals.

I’ve trav­eled over this bridge a num­ber of times, most recent­ly on May 12th, when I returned from Van­cou­ver, B.C. It’s scary to see a sec­tion of high­way I’ve reg­u­lar­ly tra­versed in pieces in the riv­er below.

UPDATE, 9:21 PM: Burling­ton North­ern San­ta Fe (BNSF) has halt­ed train traf­fic over the Skag­it Riv­er while it inspects its own bridge.

WSDOT’s Travis Phelps has con­firmed eye­wit­ness spec­u­la­tion that an over­height vehi­cle is believed to have trig­gered the bridge col­lapse; it appar­ent­ly struck a gird­er as it tra­versed the high­way over the Skag­it Riv­er. The bridge clear­ance is list­ed by the State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion as fif­teen point four (15.4) feet.

No fatal­i­ties have been con­firmed thus far. Injured indi­vid­u­als have been tak­en to the Skag­it Val­ley Hos­pi­tal to be treated.

The news that this bridge col­lapse was like­ly caused by an over­height vehi­cle brings to mind the inci­dent that dam­aged an over­pass near Roslyn a few years ago, as well as this inci­dent from 2011, in which an over­height vehi­cle dam­aged the gird­ers that car­ry Inter­state 90 over High­way 18 near North Bend.

The Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board (NTSB) is gear­ing up already to help with the inves­ti­ga­tion. The agency announced on its Twit­ter feed that per­son­nel are prepar­ing to depart for the Ever­green State immediately.

NTSB will be send­ing full go-team to inves­ti­gate the I‑5 Skagik [sic] Riv­er bridge col­lapse in Wash­ing­ton. More details soon.

— NTSB (@NTSB) May 24, 2013

King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine has released a state­ment offer­ing the resources of the state’s largest coun­ty to help with the response.