Bridge closure Eastern WA

For those of you thinking about taking a ride on US97/US97A in the Orondo/Lake Chelan, WA area anytime soon, the Beebe Bridge is closed until further notice. This is the bridge over the Columbia outside of Lake Chelan. There was a fatal semi truck accident yesterday and it took out one of the support I-beams and the bridge is "sagging". Unknown when repairs are going to be completed, and it is creating a traffic nightmare with the detour through Lake Chelan.

Only options are to either stay on the west side of the Columbia and go through Lake Chelan or cross the river at Brewster and head over the plateau to either Mc Neil Canyon Rd or to Waterville and down through Pine Canyon.

http://wenatcheeworld.com/article/20090901/NEWS04/709029996

Found some nice 1st account images from WSDOT on Flickr.



See the whole group here.

See all their stuff here.

Great stuff for a WA State resident.

I've seen some of the pics, but not that particular one. I think that was taken the next day.
If it weren't for the deaths of two folks, it've been an awesome crash. I was dispatching fire/ems that day. I think they could hear the near panic in my voice when I repeated about 5 times there was a semi truck in the water.......and possibly another car as well. Not much fazes me on the job, but vehicles off the bridges here never end well.

Kinda interesting, though, that fuel tank is on the bridge and the tractor it was attached to is over 1/2 mile away at the bottom of the river. I hope they've dne a good job of cleaning off all that diesel fuel.

Well, good news is, the bridge has been reopened for vehicle traffic, just in time for winter......

DeeG said:

If it weren't for the deaths of two folks, it've been an awesome crash.

Click to expand...

Yes... I would also like to apologize for the choice of words in my description.
By nice I meant informative. Any death in this way is quite tragic.
More so while working to support a family as I'll assume in this situation.