Narrows Nightmare

The waters of Puget Sound separate the mountainous, timbered Olympic Peninsula from the Washington mainland. There is only one point in the 20,000 square miles covered by the Sound where the Peninsula shore and the shore of the mainland are close--the famed, fabled Narrows at Tacoma, 85 miles from the mouth of the Sound, where the surging water boils through a deep passage, a little short of a mile wide. No one can swim the Narrows; the tides are too swift, the water too cold. The Narrows make one of the Northwest's dramatic views--the dark green evergreens and the far peaks of the Olympics above the opposite shore, the wide sweep of water beyond Fox Island and Point Defiance, Mount Rainier in the east, and directly below, the shimmering green water, flicked with white caps as the tides change.

For years Tacoma citizens dreamed of a bridge across the Narrows. It would cut out the old, slow ferry, bring the Navy Yard at Bremerton closer. It would help accomplish what Washingtonians talk of doing--open up the spectacular, thinly settled Olympic Peninsula. Last July Tacoma got its bridge--a slender, soaring suspension bridge,* rising 190 feet above the water, built in two years at a cost of $6,400,000 in Federal funds.

They did not enjoy it long. The Narrows bridge heaved like a hammock. Sometimes a car approaching would seem to drop clear out of sight with an undulation of the roadway. Yet the bridge was strong. Heavy winds failed to shake it; but when lighter, intermittent breezes swept in from the open Sound, it was agitated by a peculiar weaving, sinuous motion that its builder said looked like the movement of a snake under a rug. Some people got seasick at once when the bridge began to sway; some enjoyed the weird sensation, high above the water, with the wind howling and the bridge throbbing as if it were alive. Its eminent designer, Leon Moisseiff, 68-year-old builder of the Manhattan, the Triborough, the George Washington, many another mighty bridge, was unworried by its capriciousness. Builder Moisseiff, a refugee from the Tsar 50 years ago, a onetime radical, worked on experiments to correct its sway. So did engineers at the University of Washington, where a $20,000 scale model had been constructed and placed in a wind tunnel.

At 9:45 one morning last week Professor Frederick Burt Farquharson of the University of Washington arrived at the bridge as usual to make motion pictures of its gentle writhing under the wind. Soon after him came 25-year-old college student Winfield Brown, who paid his 10-c- pedestrian fee and walked across for the thrill. Approaching was a logging truck and an automobile driven by mild, baldish Leonard Coatsworth, reporter on the Tacoma News-Tribune. Mr. Coatsworth stopped to look at the undulations before he paid his toll. They were no worse than usual.

Student Brown had crossed once, was halfway back, when the rippling suddenly stopped. Horrid groans and wails came from the taut steel overhead. Lampposts jerked back and forth, broke loose, leaped over the side. Reporter Coatsworth's car smashed into the curb. The reporter got out, was pitched forward on his face. Both men, seasick, tried to get up. As they crawled forward, they were knocked down again. Concrete popped like popcorn; large chunks broke loose, whistled through the air. As the roadway buckled over on its side, Student Brown looked down at the water 190 feet below: "I thought I was a goner. ..."

Professor Farquharson hurried back ashore for more film, made his way out on the stricken bridge again as Brown and Coatsworth crawled--stopping when their breath gave out--toward the Tacoma end. From the logging truck a man and woman scrambled and clawed their way to safety. Professor Farquharson discovered Reporter Coatsworth's dog in the automobile, tried to save it, found it sick and frightened, got nipped on the knuckle. Still convinced the bridge would fight it out, he got back toward shore. He watched while it buckled up at an angle of 45 degrees. Vertical steel cables--the suspenders--crashed explosively as they parted. The great main cable, freed of its weight, tightened like a bow string, whipping the vertical cables into the air like fish lines. Reporter Coatsworth's car with dog inside plunged into the Sound. All five people on the bridge escaped, all badly battered. Professor Farquharson, retreating behind the towers, watched as the central span rose higher in a last release of tension, snapped, and plunged into the water 190 ft. below.

Builder Moisseiff said only that the bridge failed because engineers do not yet know enough about aerodynamics, that lack of funds had forced the building of a bridge unprecedentedly narrow for its length. In Tacoma, chief engineer of the bridge, Clark Eldridge, charged bitterly that State highway engineers had protested the design, had been told that Federal money-lending agencies demanded the employment of a nationally famous engineer as a requirement for lending the money. With the bridge covered by insurance, Tacoma citizens waited to find out whether it could be rebuilt, whether the same towers and approaches could be used.

* Its centre span (2,800 ft.) is the third longest in the world. Longer: George Washington (3,500) across the Hudson at Manhattan, Golden Gate (4,200) at San Francisco.

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