COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A wooden bridge over a river in southern Norway collapsed early Monday, with a car plunging into the water and a truck getting stuck on a raised section. The drivers of both vehicles were rescued and are doing well, police said.
Police were alerted just after 7:30 a.m. (05:30 GMT; 1:30 a.m. EDT) that the bridge had collapsed when a truck and car drove over it. The cause was not immediately known.
The car fell into the river, while the truck landed almost vertically on the bridge on a section that protruded steeply out of the water.
A helicopter assisted the rescue operation and got the truck driver out, police said. The driver of the car was able to get out of the vehicle on his own.
Almost 150 meters long, the bridge connects the west bank of the Gudbrandsdalslaagen river and the village of Tretten. The bridge opened in 2012.
“It’s completely disastrous, completely unreal,” local mayor Jon Halvor Midtmageli told Dabgladet newspaper. “It’s also a fairly new bridge.”
A wooden bridge over a river in southern Norway has collapsed, with a car crashing into the water and a truck getting stuck on a collapsed section. Geir Olsen/NTB Scanpix via AP
“It’s completely destroyed, everything fell down,” he added.
The Norwegian Automobile Association said the bridge was reviewed in 2021, raising concerns about the safety of such bridges.
“We who are on the roads must be able to trust that the bridges are safe to drive on,” spokeswoman Ingunn Handagard told the Norwegian news agency NTB.
The Norwegian Public Roads Administration said Monday it wanted an independent investigation into the collapse.
Almost 150 meters long, the bridge connects the west bank of the Gudbrandsdalslaagen river and the village of Tretten. The bridge opened in 2012.Stian Lysberg Solum /NTB Scanpix via AP
“Driving on Norwegian roads must be safe. That’s why it’s important to get to the bottom of this case,” said Administrative Director Ingrid Dahl Hovland.
Atle Formo, who lives at Trettenbrücke, said he heard “a violent crash”.
“The whole house was shaking. I pulled up the blinds in the bedroom and looked straight at a bridge in the river,” he told Norwegian broadcaster TV2.
A similar nearby bridge at Sjoa in the Gudbrandtal, also made of glued laminated timber, collapsed in 2016. The driver of a truck crossing the bridge at the time of the collapse received minor injuries.
After this collapse, 11 similar bridges, including the one in Tretten, were temporarily closed by the government agency responsible for Norway’s infrastructure. The agency said in a 2016 report on the collapse that “the direct cause of the bridge collapse is a broken link in the frame.”
Norwegian Transport Minister Jon-Ivar Nygård was due to visit the site of the latest bridge collapse later on Monday.