Washington state is the floating bridge capital of the world, with four of the five longest floating bridges. By the end of the day, the bridge was gone. For whatever reason, at midday on November 25, the center pontoons began to sink. Out on Lake Washington, high winds, rain and waves were striking the old pontoons. Water had likely been accumulating in the old pontoons from the beginning of the “hydrodemolition” process, and there were other water intrusion problems created when access holes were cut into the concrete and not properly sealed. The Washington state Department of Transportation and the contractor renovating the 50-year-old Inte. The replacement Lacey V. Murrow floating bridge opened to vehicle traffic in 1994 and continues to serve tens of thousands of commuters every day. The 520 bridge is going to sink. “There’s a huge yellow crane, one of those big construction cranes. The entire section is canted about a 40 degree angle, just like a big battleship rolling over and getting ready to pitch straight down. And now it’s up to the top of its wheels. “While everyone must have understood that a floating bridge could sink, the thought that a sinking was a real risk must have been remote.”. Traffic between Seattle and the Eastside was a mess, with the Evergreen Point floating bridge on State Route 520 the only available option for crossing Lake … It had been closed to vehicle traffic for nearly two years and a new bridge had been built alongside. And no matter how much planning goes into bridge construction or how much engineers "overdesign" bridges to account for unexpectedly extreme circumstances, floating bridges can and do fail. Lake Washington Floating Bridge is dedicated on July 2, 1940. “And here it goes now,” Brendle continued. Travelling always sucks around holidays, and it gets exponentially worse when, I don’t know, a floating bridge sinks. Washington State Department of Transportation. As they disappeared under the water, they pulled more and more of the crumbling roadway down with them. The notion of "going pro" was still more daydream than plan, but we picked our name - a tribute to one of the unique aspects of Seattle (and fixture in our daily commute) - just in case. “And another section of the bridge is now giving away, breaking as I’m watching it. http://www.historylink.org/File/682 The Lacey V. Murrow bridge (right) is the world's third-longest floating bridge at 6,603 feet. The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, also known as the 520 Bridge and officially the Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge, carries Washington State Route 520 across Lake Washington from Seattle to its eastern suburbs.The 7,710-foot-long (2,350 m) floating span is the longest floating bridge in the world, as well as the world's widest measuring 116 feet (35 m) at its midpoint. He’d been flying around that Sunday morning getting a look at flooding in the Snoqualmie Valley from the heavy rains that week. After a howling wind- and rainstorm on Thanksgiving Day, Washington state’s historic floating Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge breaks apart and sinks to the bottom of Lake Washington, between Seattle and its suburbs to the east. 1. Floating bridge threatens to sink Likoni cable cars plan Wednesday December 02 2020. Although, when they did that, three of the hooks that hold the pontoons of the two bridges together came off, so they have to fix that. Right now the concrete is bubbling. The bridge’s namesake was director of the Washington State Highway Department in the 1930s and 1940s, and grew up in Skagit County. Once the bridge opened, access from Seattle improved, and the area gradually grew into a bedroom community. But floating bridges have at least one disadvantage that others don’t: they can sink. For several hours before the Tuesday the 13th catastrophe, a storm has battered the bridge with winds of 80 miles per hour gusting to 120 miles per hour. And I said, ‘No, no. Thus, this was the first, and so far the only time a Murrow Award has involved two of the Murrow brothers. It will also go to the bottom of Lake Washington,” Brendle said. But at least it didn't sink, like the I-90 floating bridge did in the '90s. Still, people scoffed at what they called “Hadley’s Folly” (one civic organization declared that his “chain of scows across Lake Washington would stand out as a municipal eyesore”), but eventually, mostly because they had no other options, they came around to his way of thinking. The state highway department alleged that construction crews had left the pontoons’ hatches open, leaving them vulnerable to the weekend’s heavy rains and large waves. It had been stormy that week. The scenic bridge is called the world’s longest floating bridge over salt water, at 1 1/2 miles long. On Tuesday, February 13, 1979, about 7 a.m., the western half of the Hood Canal Bridge sinks during a severe storm. We upgraded to a 20 gallon 3-vessel system and temperature controlled conical fermenter. The late Paul Brendle was KIRO Radio’s traffic helicopter pilot back then. KIRO traffic reporter flies over sinking bridge, Harrowing Burien airliner crash covered up by time, Minimum wage increase, protections for orcas among new laws taking effect in 2021, Puyallup Tribe sues Electron Dam owner over artificial turf pollution, Tacoma to end glass recycling pickup at homes starting next week, Sign up to receive the most popular email. Crews from an Illinois-based company called Traylor Brothers were working on a $30 million project to renovate the old bridge. Copyright © 2021 | MH Magazine WordPress Theme by MH Themes. Its pontoons are 60 feet wide and support a roadway with three lanes of eastbound traffic. Gondry was fresh out of college and something of a rookie in the newsroom. After a howling wind- and rainstorm on Thanksgiving Day, Washington state’s historic floating Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge breaks apart and sinks to the bottom of Lake Washington, between Seattle and its suburbs to the east. 1. She says she called Brendle up in his helicopter immediately on the two-way radio. They are the SR 520 Gov. Further exacerbating these problems were a lack of sufficient water-level monitoring devices inside the pontoons, and too few pumps on-site to save the bridge once the problem was noticed that Sunday morning. On November 25th, 1990, the I-90 Floating Bridge across Lake Washington collapsed. With wind in the forecast, authorities decided to bring in tugboats to hold the new bridge in place until repairs could be made. Photo credit: Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com Homer Hadley Bridge (left) and Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge (right). Because the bridge’s disintegration happened relatively slowly, news crews were able to capture the whole thing on camera, broadcasting it to a rapt audience across western Washington. The handful of workers on the bridge that morning evacuated safely and nobody was injured when the old bridge sank. The Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge that connected Seattle to Mercer Island sank to the bottom of Lake Washington 23 years ago this weekend. © 2021 Bonneville International. Albert D. Rosellini (Evergreen Point) Bridge (7,708 feet), the I-90 Lacey V. Murrow Bridge (6,620 feet), the SR 104 Hood Canal Bridge (6,521 feet), and the I-90 Homer M. Hadley Bridge (5,811 feet). Natural disasters can ruin a lot of human creations, and floating bridges are no exception. It is the longest floating bridge in existence. The current bridge was built in 1993, replacing a structure that sank during a severe storm. Washington Governor Booth Gardner took a helicopter tour of waterlogged areas and said, “My state is falling apart on me.”. A study of the disaster later determined that multiple factors were to blame for the dramatic sinking of the old bridge. A few days of rain and high winds filled the pontoons with water, and the bridge broke apart and sank. Bizarre Lake Washington disaster struck 27 years ago, The Lacey V. Murrow floating bridge sank to the bottom of Lake Washington on Nov. 25, 1990. He arrived over the bridge just in time to deliver a gripping live play-by-play. The high-rise plummets into Lake Washington and is severed from the floating bridge deck, or pontoons, which begin to sink. So this crane will be pitching over any moment and going underwater. $20 MILLION SETTLEMENT IS REACHED IN SINKING OF SEATTLE FLOATING BRIDGE. 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