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The four-lane Interstate 5 bridge more than half a century old collapsed about halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, Trooper Mark Francis said.
Francis said he did not know how many people were in the water. He did not know what caused the collapse, which came at the start of one of the country's busiest holiday weekends of the year.
Xavier Grospe, who lives near the river, said he could see three partially submerged cars, and the apparent drivers were sitting either on top of the vehicles or on the edge of open windows.
It doesn't look like anybody's in danger right now, Grospe said. Helicopter footage aired by KOMO-TV in Seattle showed one rescue boat leaving the scene with one person strapped into a stretcher.
A damaged red car and a damaged pickup truck were visible in the water, which appeared so shallow it barely reached the top of the car's hood.
A man told the local Skagit Valley Herald newspaper he felt a vibration and looked in his rear view mirror to see that the part of bridge he had just crossed was no longer behind him.
I thought something was wrong with my car at first, he said The bridge is not considered structurally deficient but is listed as being ``functionally obsolete'' meaning that its design is outdated, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.
The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.
The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 infrastructure report card said more than a quarter of Washington state's 7,840 bridges were considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
