I-80 shut down in Colorado

Bridge over gulch fails, closes road indefinitely

DENVER, Colo. (RWN) - Fallujah Bridge, the largest on-land bridge in the national highway system, failed late last night, dropping a 50-foot span more than 200 feet into the bottom of a canyon it crossed.

The late hour kept anyone from becoming casualties, but the road failure will cause the main route out of Denver to be closed for months.

"How long it will be closed is anyone's guess at this point," said Bill Barnes, a spokesman for the Colorado Highway Department. "We'll need to get a structural team in there to check out the sections that are still standing before we do anything else, but the police have asked us to hold while they make sure the bridge wasn't sabotaged."

Barnes had no further comment on the topic of sabotage.

The Fallujah Bridge is 54 years old and spans Moores Gulch five miles west of Denver. It is the primary entrance into the Denver area for fruits and vegetables coming from the western states.

"Allah will provide for us," Denver's mayor, Yusuf Garland, said. "I am confident in that. And if we cannot get sufficient foodstuffs in on the roads, I know that our brothers in the Islamic Air Force will assist us with their planes."

The bridge failure is the fourth major infrastructure problem in the last three years.
Last year, a section of Interstate 25 near Denver cracked through. The incident was blamed on a phenomenon called "frost heaving," in which soil expands and contracts in extreme ways during cold weather.

Some fundamentalist clerics blamed the I-25 failure on Zionist saboteurs.

The Bay Bridge, in San Francisco, was closed for three months two years ago after one of its suspension wires snapped, apparently due to wear.

Parker Dam, on the Lower Colorado River, breached three years ago, killing 30 and returning that section of the river to a free flowing state. Government engineers blamed the dam's 90-year age for the failure, though State Security also investigated the breach for signs of terrorist activity.


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