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For the Love of Pete....
Maybe Trooper Francis doesn't know what caused the collapse, but I think we can take a reasonable guess as to the chief contributor to the collapse - a backlog of $1.6 trillion dollars in infrastructure maintenance that we should have been working on for the last decade. Instead, we spent more than that on tax breaks for the rich, bailing out "too big to fail" banks, and two optional wars. You know, priorities.
(Note: Mount Vernon is about an hour north of Seattle by car. Map)
EDIT Quoting KOMO news, italics mine:
BTW, That C- is a better grade than the D+ the ASCE gave to the US as a whole in that same report. Oregon, for its part, gets a C- overall and a C- for transportation.
MOUNT VERNON, Wash. -- The Washington State Patrol says the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River at Mount Vernon has collapsed, dumping vehicles and people into the water.
Trooper Mark Francis said the four-lane bridge collapsed about 7 p.m.
Francis says he has no idea how many people are in the water or whether there are any injuries or deaths.
He did not know what caused the collapse.
Maybe Trooper Francis doesn't know what caused the collapse, but I think we can take a reasonable guess as to the chief contributor to the collapse - a backlog of $1.6 trillion dollars in infrastructure maintenance that we should have been working on for the last decade. Instead, we spent more than that on tax breaks for the rich, bailing out "too big to fail" banks, and two optional wars. You know, priorities.
(Note: Mount Vernon is about an hour north of Seattle by car. Map)
EDIT Quoting KOMO news, italics mine:
Bart Treece with the Washington State Department of Transportation was unsure when the bridge was last inspected.
"All of our bridges in the area are pretty old," he said.
Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state's bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington's 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient of functionally obsolete.
BTW, That C- is a better grade than the D+ the ASCE gave to the US as a whole in that same report. Oregon, for its part, gets a C- overall and a C- for transportation.
