Covered Bridges Wrecked By Irene

NYT, via Yglesias:

Covered-bridge enthusiasts and others shuddered as they watched an amateur video, on the Internet, of the Bartonsville bridge in Vermont sliding almost intact into the Williams River on Sunday.
Vermont officials have found several other covered bridges, among the 100 or so statewide, that have been seriously damaged, but the loss of the Bartonsville bridge, built in 1871, with a wooden lattice spanning 158 feet, was considered the greatest historical blow. (Another badly damaged bridge, in Quechee, was covered but built of concrete in the 1970s.)
Preservationists were also upset to learn that the Blenheim bridge on Schoharie Creek in upstate New York was totaled on Sunday. The bridge, built in 1855, was said to have the longest span of any covered bridge in the world — an astounding 210 feet — and was one of only six in the world to have two separated lanes.
“New York lost a very prestigious covered bridge,” said Trish Kane, who is collections curator of the Theodore Burr Covered Bridge Resource Center in Oxford, N.Y. “It was an engineering marvel.”

That's kind of depressing.  Locally, a covered bridge was restored with over a half million dollars of local and federal funding.  Then somebody drove a truck onto the bridge, causing approximately $75,000 damage.  All of that is fixed now, but the county is looking at installing security cameras, which really takes the fun out of the bridge.  One time as a kid, I crawled underneath the bridge, onto the pier in the middle of the river.  While I was down there, my friend told me not to come up yet.  A sheriff deputy was driving through.  I managed to avoid any trouble, but I wouldn't have been doing such fun things with cameras up. The Man is always working to take the enjoyment out of life.