Troopers seek passing truck in I-5 Skagit River bridge collapse

The Washington State Patrol is trying to track down a truck that passed another oversized truck that crashed into the I-5 bridge over the Skagit River just before the bridge collapsed.

Trooper Mark Francis says a security camera on the west side of the bridge caught a glimpse of the unknown truck right before the collision.

“You can see a white trailer through the oversized load. We can’t tell the color of its tractor but we want to get his or her perspective,” he says.

Francis says the oversized load may have hit an upper portion of the other truck as it passed, but the driver very well might not have even known it.

“We just want to see what the driver knows,” Francis says.

A 160-foot section of the bridge crumbled May 23 when a truck carrying an oversize load hit a girder. The truck made it off the bridge but two vehicles went into the water and three people were rescued.

Work is on track for the bridge over the Skagit River to reopen in mid-month, the Transportation Department said Monday.

The National Transportation Safety Board has not yet finished its site investigation, but a contractor has started assembling a temporary span that can be rolled into position to replace the collapsed section.

An NTSB investigator traveled to the headquarters of Mullen Trucking in Aldersyde, Alberta, to gather information about the truck that was carrying the oversize load, the NTSB said.

If the company is negligent, the state could make a claim to recover damages.

The temporary span and a replacement this fall will cost about $15 million. The federal government is paying most of that.

Traffic is detoured through Mount Vernon and Burlington until a temporary bridge is in place. The span carried an average of 71,000 vehicles a day on the main route between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Associated Press contributed to this report