i-5 bridge collapse incident command report

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Interstate 5 Bridge CollapseIncident Command ReportMay

26h2013

Incident Numbers:Mount Vernon Fire: 2013-1697

State Mission Number: 13-1762

Incident Commander: Battalion Chief Mike VossPhotos: Firefighter/Paramedic Bryan Luchi

I --

Battalion Chief Mike Voss


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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYShortly after 1900 hours on May 23d 2013 the Skagit 911 center began receiving 911calls reporting that the northern part of the 1-5 Skagit River Bridge had collapsed andthere were cars in the water.Shortly thereafter Skagit 911 simultaneously dispatched the Mount Vernon FireDepartment, The Burlington Fire Department, Central Valley Ambulance Authority, andthe Skagit County Sheriffs Office Water Rescue Unit to the incident. That responseconsisted of 3 Engines, a Ladder Company, 5 ALS Ambulances, 2 Fire DepartmentCommand Officers, 2 Rescue Boats, and 2 deputies with SAR responsibilities with atotal of 28 personnel.Three people were rescued from their cars by the Skagit County Sheriffs Water RescueUnit with assistance from a US Navy Rescue Swimmer. The people rescued were allhypothermic, two of the people had minor injuries, and one person had more seriousinjuries. There were no fatalities.

INCIDENT RESPONSE AND OPERATIONSAt approximately 1900 hours on May 23w, 2013 the Skagit 911 center began receiving911 calls reporting that the northern part of the 1-5 Skagit River Bridge had collapsedand there were cars in the water.I was dispatched along with the initial units to the incident. During the response Ireviewed the information provided by Skagit 911 on the MDC and was also providedwith a verbal report by the dispatcher. Skagit 911 confirmed that the northern part of the1-5 Bridge over the Skagit River had collapsed and that there were cars in the water.During the response I contacted Skagit 911 via radio and requested SCSO forwatercraft support. I was informed by Skagit gllthat they had already notified them andthat they were responding. Based on the location of the incident and anticipated rescueoperations I decided to respond to the north side of the incident via Whitmarsh Rd . As Icrossed the Riverside Drive Bridge I had a full view of the incident and observed at least2 vehicles in the water and 2 people either sitting on top of their cars or in the process ofdoing so.As I arrived on scene I established Whitmarsh Command as I had not heard any otherunits arrive on scene. I initially surveyed the scene from the top of the levee and madethe following observations:

The northern span of the bridge had collapsed into a V-shaped pattern andappeared to be sitting on the bottom of the river.

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There was severe damage to the truss system of the collapsed section includingfractured steel members. On the bridge pier to the south of the collapsed section the connections had

pulled from the bolts and there was damage to the concrete portion of the pier.However, the pier appeared to be plumb and level. The next span to the south had what appeared to be severe damage to the 3dtruss member from the north. There were quite a few cars on the remaining three spans and the southernapproach span in the northbound direction. The northern approach span appeared intact, the bridge pier appeared to be

plumb and level and the connections to the collapsed span had pulled out of thepier causing damage to the concrete. There appeared to be three vehicles in the water: 1 Brown pickup truck, 1 orangeSUV, 1 upside down vehicle. The Pick-up and SUV each had one occupant sitting on top of the vehicles.

During my initial size-up El 11 arrived at the bridge from the south and walked out onthe span. I was informed by Lt. Storey that he saw the three vehicles. The SU V and thepick-up had people sitting on their roofs and that the pickup had a third occupant wh owas lying on the front seat and appeared to be unconscious. During this conversation Iinstructed Dave to evacuate the people from their vehicles on the bridge and designatedhim as Division A. I also had Lt. Storey quickly look down river in attempt to ascertain ifwe had any vehicle occupants floating down the river. He stated that he could no t seeanyone and then proceeded to evacuate the bridge. Additionally, I assigned M129 toproceed a half a mile down river where ALT Moulton established an observation pointon the river at pre-established river point 8 (see attached map).After I talked with El 11, Lt. Bond from E181 1 approached and suggested that weestablish a rope line down to the water. I instructed him to set up on the Westside of thebridge and, later on , to also put a ladder in place to ease river egress. In order to quicklyaccomplish this task I assigned additional resources (L125) to assist. I also assignedLt. Mike Hammer as the safety officer to monitor this activity.After talking with Lt. Bond I walked over the westside of the bridge to view the incidentfrom a different angle. Once there I was able to determine that the upside down vehicleappeared to be a travel trailer. At this point information from WSP troopers on sceneconfirmed that the brown pickup was towing a travel trailer and that according to severalwitnesses that only two vehicles appeared to have gone down with the bridge; however;at this point it was unknown how many occupants were in the vehicles. Additionally, Iwas told that a truck had struck the bridge possibly causing the collapse.1-5 Bridge Collapse Incident Command Report 2 I P a g e


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Once on the westside of the bridge I encountered SCSO deputy Howell. We had aconversation regarding the ETA of the SCSO rescue boat (30 mm ) and where wewould remove the patients from the water. It was decided that we would bring them tothe river bank adjacent to the northern pier as we had a calm eddy current there and thewater was deep enough to get a boat to the shore. At this point I had Lt. Bond also runa ladder down the bank to facilitate easy egress. Deputy Howell joined the unifiedcommand team as did the WSP trooper, BPD command personnel, and CVAA PMJennifer Russell. PM Russell indicated that she would set up the triage group and wouldhandle patient care.During this phase of the incident and while waiting for the rescue boats the followingactions/events took place:

Skagit 911 had contacted the Coast Guard for a ir resources which I approved.ETA 60 minutes. I was notified by Skagit 911 that a Helicopter from Snohomish County would alsobe en-route. I was notified that NAS Whidbey had dispatched a Sea Hawk helicopter. Theyarrived within about 20 minutes of notification. Their initial assignment by mewas to check down river to ensure that there were no victims floating down theriver. After confirming this they landed and a Navy corpsman and rescue

swimmer came to the ICP. Additional discussions with the corpsman included theNavy serving as an air ambulance for critical trauma, if needed. The corpsman,PM Russell, and I agreed that would be plan. As a result of that decision and thefact we were going to put their swimmer in the water to assist with the rescue ofthe people from the pickup they kept the Sea Hawk spooled up ready to launchat a moments notice. Mark Watkinson, interim DEM Director, came to the ICP where we discussedopening the EOC and calling Northwest Washington Incident ManagementTeam, a FEMA trained AHIMT with extensive all-risk experience. We both

agreed quickly that opening the EOC was a good idea along with calling the Type3 team. While the rescues would most likely be over within the hour the logisticalneeds of WADOT, WSP, and local law enforcement would go on fo r the next 24to 36 hours and that would require a Type 3 Incident Management Team tosupport. I noticed that the people awaiting rescue were starting to shiver indicating theprogression of hypothermia. I anticipated that by the time these people made itto shore that they would probably be significantly hypothermic and unable to walkplus we might have a major trauma patient as well. Therefore, I made the

decision that all patients would be loaded into stokes baskets and brought up theslope to triage. This was communicated to Lt. Bond. L 125 carries 1 stokes1-5 Bridge Collapse Incident Command Report 3 j P a g e


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from a State off ice on Friday morning wanting to get permission to fly through the TFRin order to bring the Congressional Delegation into the scene.About the same time that Snohomish County was finishing their air search the CBProtor arrived. In order to be as thorough as possible I had them use their FLIR device tocheck the river and its banks for possible victims. The FLIR gave us an opportunity toscour the river in a different fashion for victim(s) hidden in the brush and debris alongthe river banks. I am happy to report no other victims were located. Reports from theaircraft, El 11 and 1802s observations that they could only see the two vehicles in therelatively shallow collapse area served to confirm that other witnesses only saw twovehicles go down with the bridge. An attempted search by SCSO divers of the collapsearea was halted to lack of daylight, swift currents, and generally very dangerousconditions.At this point the rescue operation was declared over. No injuries were incurred by any ofthe first responders. Safety of the rescuers and responders during all phases of theinitial actions was strongly emphasized and appeared to be followed by all involved.

RADIO COMMUNICATIONSSkagit County Fire and EMS agencies are dispatched and communicate over a VHFmulti-site radio system that consists of 1 dedicated dispatch frequency and 10 tacticalchannels. Five of those tactical channels are repeated and 5 are simplex.The incident occurred in an area of excellent radio coverage with six of the tacticalchannels available for use in this area. The incident util ized two tactical channels. TAC3 was used for Incident Operations and TAC 9 was used to communicate with DEM forlogistics requests.Radio channel crowding was not an issue. Al l agencies used good radio discipline anda lot of the needed tactical communications were conducted face to face. This left theradio open for critical communications.Skagit County Law Enforcement agencies use a multi-site UHF radio system. EachLaw Enforcement Agency has their own main operations frequency and there are twocounty-wide law tactical repeaters. Law enforcement agencies used their ownfrequencies for operations and did not report any communications difficulties. The mostcritical law communications took place on the SCSO frequency between Deputy Howelland the Rescue Boat. No communications issues were reported.I think one of the things that made this incident go so well was that there were no majorcommunications headaches with the VHF and UHF radio systems. Where at many largescale incidents communications is one of the top things that fail, at this incidentcommunications was one of the strong points and helped facilitate our success.

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A major benefit of how we structured the unified command also assisted greatly instreamlining communications. All the key command staff from each agency werelocated in one spot which facilitated rapid and effective communications betweenagencies operating in different frequency bands and between federal and non-federalagencies.

CELLULAR AND LANDLINE COMMUNICATIONSLike many other major incidents across the nation cellular communications becametotally unavailable due to overwhelming usage. This situation was anticipated by myselfand talked about with the unified command group. What was also interesting was thatthe regular telephone network became unusable as well presumably also due tooverwhelming usage. Even more intriguing is that GETS and WPS were not availableand/or did not work.There were fiber optic and power distribution lines that crossed the river on the bridge.Since it is suspected that the fiber optic cable was damaged during the event it couldhave been a factor in the failure of the landline phone networks. Additionally, it ispossible that the power outage caused by the severing of the power lines that crossedthe bridge had an impact on the PSTN. Some follow-up with the phone and cellularcompanies should be an important goal during the after action review of this incident.

SKAGIT 911Skagit 911 played a major role in the success of this incident. The initial dispatch wasspot on . Stacey Clifton, based on initial reports, chose to dispatch this incident as anMCI major on initial notification. This resulted in a large component force of multipleagencies and jurisdictions being simultaneously notified of the event. This actuallyworked to decrease overall incident radio traffic and allowed the fire dispatchers tofocus on the resource needs of the incident and provided the Incident Command Teamwith the proper resources during the initial phases of the incident.Dave Sackman was the primary dispatcher on the Fire/EMS radio system. As theincident commander it was apparent that Daves experience and calm helped himanticipate my needs as the IC which resulted in a very smooth and effective radiointerface between Skagit 911 and I, the dispatchers working the other radio consolesand the entire Incident Command Team. Dave had a major impact on the effectivenessof communications and the successful outcome of this incident.

SUMMARY

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Three people were successfully rescued from the Skagit River following a motor vehiclecollision with the support structure and subsequent catastrophic failure of the 1-5 Bridgeover the Skagit River. The success of the operation is rooted in the rapid developmentof an effective incident management structure, effective communications, andproductive relationships amongst the on-scene leadership from all of the agenciesinvolved.

DEFINITIONSAHIMT Al l Hazard Incident Management TeamCBP U.S. Customs and Border PatrolCVAA Central Valley Ambulance AuthorityDEM Department of Emergency ManagementEOC Emergency Operations CenterFEMA Federal Emergency Management AgencyFLIR Forward Looking InfraredGETS Government Emergency Telephone SystemICE Immigration and Customs EnforcementICP Incident Command PostMDC Mobile Data ComputerNWIMT Northwest Washington Incident Management TeamPM - ParamedicPSTN Public Switched Telephone NetworkSAR Search and RescueSCSO Skagit County Sheriffs OfficeTFR Temporary Flight RestrictionWADOT Washington State Department of TransportationWPS Wireless Priority Service

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Appendix ARiver Map

Swiftwater/Flood Rescue Checklist



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Mile IC6 - 14293 River Bend 15 5 - 14178 River Bend Mile 2- Riverside Bridge7- l4323RiverBeM 4- l4Ol2RiverBend 0 1-827 Hc.ag

B - 14371 River Bend Si&v RD 3- 111 Seiart ICAG IIe

14423 Ritr Bend

14 10 - 14549 River Bend.11 - 14557 River Bend0 H1 ,fl, R:JCJSLVLLI AW

Mile 12- 14713 River Bend13

13a - 14797 River Bend34

- i3b - Mc-ores Garden Rd14- Youngs Bar p15- Lions Park

16 - W Div BridgeMi.c LIAN RD

\7a - Edgeiiater Boat Launch ib - Mose Lodge1g-ccsMileII 19 -1005 W Hazel I sLi. 1wWIIA.ILLSI

DIRt 20 - 1400 Riverview LaneF-MileIC

W oui.:tISJRN RL I ULA:KuJRJ RUnZr

CAUIOUN RD MVFD Skagit River Sight Points0 1.003 Z000 4.000 Feet21-1723OCALHOUNRD I I

Mile9 V r



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Swiftwater/ Flood Search and Rescue (SFISAR)Incident Commander Checklist

Phase I: Size upPrimary Assessment

Establish Command (ICS, consider Unified Command)Secure Witness / RP , interviewDetermine location/number/condition of victim(s)Point Last Seen (PLS)Identify immediate hazards

Water level rising/falling (mark water level)Surface loads (debris), hydraulics, strainers, hypothermia

Secondary Assessment (Evaluate incident needs)RESCUE or RECOVERY mode?Initiate pre-planned response as appropriate:

Sheriff (River Boat from Burlington)SAR Special Rescue Team (Swiftwater Techs, Zodiak boat, Rope Rescue)George Larson Marine Rescue (River Boat , Hovercraf t)Dive Rescue (Divers, River Boat )

Consider additional resourcesEstablish Logistics support

Rehab for cold rescuersPhase II: Pre-Rescue Operations

Secure general scene, deny entryj Secure rescue scene

Limit risk to untrained rescuersAssure team response to opposite bankPPE required within 10 feet of bankAssign downstream safety (Throw bags)Assign upstream spotters

Tag-In all personnelEstablish Communication Plan:

assign tactical and command channelsForm Incident Action Plan

Talk (Self Rescue), Reach, Throw, *Wade, *Row *Go HeloBackup plansSubject Personal Protective Equipment (PFD, Helmet, Chem-light)Pre-Rescue briefing

Phase Ill: Rescue OperationsImplement primary action plan*Contact Subject*Apply Subjects PPE*Remove subject to safe areaTransfer to ALS, Consider hypothermia

Phase IV: TerminationPersonal Accountability Report (PAR)j Consider De-Con of rescuers

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