Bridge Collapses

State officials are investigating the collapse last week of a temporary bridge near Lompoc that caved in just seconds after an 83-ton truck crossed the expanse, sending the next vehicle sliding on a harrowing ride about 30 feet to the creek bed below. The driver of the vehicle that crashed, San Fernando Valley resident Brian Foster, was not seriously injured. As a result of the accident, state Sen.

Federal safety officials blamed a shifting river channel for the collapse last year of a Tennessee highway bridge that killed eight motorists. They said state officials should have corrected the problem a decade ago. National Transportation Safety Board investigators said the river channel has moved 83 feet since the bridge was constructed in 1936. The board also said the lack of a backup support system contributed to the severity of the accident.

Search teams combing the flooded Schoharie Creek on Monday recovered the bodies of three people killed in the collapse of a New York Thruway bridge, and state officials tried to determine whether the swift current had eroded the structure enough to cause the disaster. Montgomery County sheriff's deputies found the first body Sunday night. Monday morning, they removed two dead men from a car dragged out of the swift current.

Searchers on Friday found the bodies of the fourth and fifth victims of the New York State Thruway bridge collapse, one in a vehicle pinned beneath tons of twisted steel and concrete and another in a car found downstream. Authorities believe 10 people were killed in Sunday's collapse. A car removed downstream from the bridge Friday had carried three employees of the Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., state trooper Edward Dyer said. The body was identified as that of Donald Hughes of Troy, Dyer said.

As Navy divers combed the gnarled wreckage of the collapsed Interstate 35W bridge Monday, federal agents searched for the missing using a submarine, a helicopter equipped with cameras, and detailed images captured from scanners onshore. But by rush hour -- five days after the late-afternoon collapse -- the minute search still yielded no word on the eight people still missing and believed to have perished.

A bridge under construction in the southern Chinese town of Fenghuang collapsed after scaffolding was removed, killing at least 34 people, injuring 22 and rekindling concern about rushed, shoddy building amid China's torrid economic expansion. About 30 people were missing. Witnesses said they heard a rumble Monday afternoon and saw stones fall from the 140-foot-high, 880-foot-long vehicle and pedestrian bridge across the Tuo River.

Caltrans permit writers routed at least six overweight trucks over a temporary bridge near Lompoc that collapsed last week, unaware that the road had weight restrictions or that a temporary structure was even in place, sources in the agency said Thursday. The two-lane bridge on California 246 had been open for two weeks when it collapsed Oct. 21, just seconds after a legally permitted truck weighing more than twice the bridge's capacity drove across.

A Caltrans inquiry has tentatively concluded that the manufacturer of a temporary bridge near Lompoc was responsible for the span's collapse six weeks ago, but serious questions remain about the agency's culpability in the dramatic failure, a state senator said Thursday. The temporary bridge on a stretch of California 246 caved in just seconds after a nearly 90-ton truck crossed it, sending the next vehicle on a harrowing slide to the creek bed 30 feet below. No one was injured in the mishap.

The Winston stock car race was winding down and fans were streaming across a pedestrian bridge over a four-lane highway when two loud cracks could be heard above the murmur of the crowd. With the second crack, an 80-foot section of the 320-foot concrete-and-steel walkway snapped in half and fell onto the highway outside Lowe's Motor Speedway on Saturday night. A total of 107 people received medical treatment, track spokesman Jerry Gappens said.

Safety concerns on Sunday delayed the work to recover victims missing after barges smashed a section out of a major bridge and dropped cars 85 feet into a shipping channel, killing at least four people. The barges hit a piling, knocking three 80-foot segments of the Queen Isabella Causeway into the Laguna Madre channel early Saturday. The bridge is the only link between the mainland and the popular South Padre Island resorts on the Gulf of Mexico.