A bridge in Norway connecting the village of Tretten to the other side of a river collapsed, sending a car plunging into the water.
The wooden bridge, which was built in 2012, collapsed Monday morning as a truck and a car were travelling over it. The reason for the collapse has not been found, the New York Post reported.
The car plunged into the water and the truck fell onto a raise section of the bridge, where it remained lodged at a vertical angle sticking out of the water.
The driver of the car was able to get out of the vehicle on his own. A helicopter was needed to aid the truck driver, police said.
The drivers of both vehicles were rescued and were not seriously injured, according to police.
The 500-foot-long bridge links the Tretten to the west bank of the Gudbrandsdalslaagen River.
“It is completely catastrophic, completely unreal,” Jon Halvor Midtmageli, the mayor of the municipality of Øyer, which includes Tretten, told Dabgladet. “It is also a fairly new bridge.”
He described the bridge as “completely destroyed, everything has fallen down.”
The Norwegian Automobile Association expressed outrage that the relatively new bridge that was last inspected in 2021 could have collapsed suddenly.
“We who travel on the roads must be able to trust that the bridges are safe to drive on,” spokesperson Ingunn Handagard told Norwegian news agency NTB.
The Norwegian government closed 11 similar bridges on Monday in response to the incident.
The Norwegian Public Roads Administration called on the government to initiate in independent investigation.