The wife of an Edmonton-area truck driver, who has been cited by authorities as causing a terrifying bridge collapse in Washington state Thursday evening, spoke to CTV News Friday, and said her husband was horrified at what happened.

Cynthia Scott said her husband, William, 41, had just made it across the four-lane bridge spanning the Skagit River on the Interstate-5, when he said he saw the shocking collapse unfold behind him.

“It just dropped off, just right out of his sight,” Scott said, in an interview with CTV News.

“He just said it just dropped out of sight, it was gone, and people were in the water and he was horrified.”

Scott said one vehicle made it over the bridge behind her husband’s truck, but more ended up in the water.

Washington State Police said two vehicles plunged 15 metres into the river; three people were pulled from the water and rushed to hospital.

Back in the Edmonton area, Scott said the incident has rocked her husband to the core.

“He is shaken up; he was really scared for the people who had fallen off the bridge, he was really happy to hear that they were fine, to see that they were fine, and that was the real blessing.”

While police say it was William Scott’s load that struck the bridge and caused the collapse, his wife doesn’t think her husband’s truck is to blame.

“It seems physically impossible to have done any kind of damage to a structure like that,” Scott said.

“He made it through the whole entire bridge without hitting anything.”

In addition, she said her husband’s paperwork was in order, and he had the proper permits – she said he has 20 years of trucking experience, with at least half of that spent hauling heavy loads.

Police said they’re looking into the permits and paperwork.

“It’s indeterminable if he was actually in compliance, associated with that permit,” Washington Patrol Chief John Batiste said in a press conference Friday. “He was in fact issued a permit.”

CTV News has also learned there could have been structural issues with the bridge in question before the collapse – as it was listed on a Federal Highway Administration database as being ‘functionally obsolete”.

That listing means the bridge’s design is considered out of date – it was built in 1955, and had a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100 – well below the state average of 80.

However, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, 759 bridges in that state have a lower sufficiency score.

State officials said Friday that the bridge was not deficient, and had recently passed an inspection – the state’s Transportation Secretary called it bad luck.

“This is just bad luck of where it hit, and how it hit, and it’s basically not a structural deficiency of the bridge itself,” Secretary Lynn Peterson said.

A University of British Columbia Structural Engineer shed more light on this particular bridge design.

“That’s a relatively inexpensive bridge, built at a time when labour was cheap and material was more expensive,” Perry Adebar said in an interview with CTV B.C. “There’s very little extra material in that bridge.”

William Scott is still in the area of the collapse while police carry out their investigation, he was interviewed by authorities early Friday morning.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Scott and her husband are comforted that the incident turned out as it did, without tragedy.

“Vehicles can be replaced, trucks can be replaced, bridges can be replaced but people can’t.”

With files from Jeff Harrington