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MOUNT VERNON, Wash. (AP) — A truck hauling a too-tall load of drilling equipment hit an overhead bridge girder on the major interstate between Seattle and Canada, sending a section of the span and two vehicles into the Skagit River. All three occupants suffered only minor injuries.

It happened about 7 p.m. Thursday on the north section of the four-lane Interstate 5 bridge near Mount Vernon, about 60 miles north of Seattle and 40 miles south of the Canada border, and disrupted travel in both directions.

Washington State Patrol Trooper Mark Francis told the Skagit Valley Herald (http://bit.ly/1afx3lU ) the driver works for Mullen Trucking in Alberta. The tractor-trailer, which was marked as an oversize load, was hauling a housing for drilling equipment Vancouver, Wash., he said. The top right front corner of the load struck several trusses on the north end of the bridge, Francis said.

An accident report said the driver was William Scott, of Spruce Grove, Alberta, near Edmonton. He voluntarily gave a blood sample for an alcohol test and was not arrested.

Initially, it wasn't clear if the bridge just gave way on its own. But at an overnight news conference, Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste blamed it on the too-tall load. The vertical clearance from the roadway to the beam is 14.6 feet.

"For reasons unknown at this point in time, the semi struck the overhead of the bridge causing the collapse," Batiste said.

The truck made it off the bridge and the driver remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators.

Two other vehicles went into the water about 25 feet below as the structure crumbled. Three people were rescued and were recovering Friday.

Traffic could be affected for some time. The bridge is used by an average of 71,000 vehicles a day, so the roadblock will cause a major disruption in trade and tourism between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Washington Transportation Department has set up detours. The closest bridge nearby is mostly used for local traffic between Mount Vernon and Burlington. The department also is recommending detours using Highway 20 and Highway 9 that add tens of miles to a trip. Drivers are urged to avoid the area if possible, especially over the Memorial Day weekend.

Francisco Rodriguez, of Burlington, looked at the damage Thursday evening and realized the area has lost an important transportation link.

"Well, very important, I mean everybody goes through here, everybody goes to Canada, Canadian side. Myself, I drove it every day, twice a day," he said.

Dan Sligh and his wife were in their pickup on Interstate 5 heading to a camping trip when a bridge before them disappeared in a "big puff of dust."

"I hit the brakes and we went off," Sligh told reporters from a hospital, adding he "saw the water approaching ... you hold on as tight as you can."

Sligh, his wife and another man in a different vehicle were dumped into the chilly waters of the Skagit River.

Sligh and his wife were taken to Skagit Valley Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The other man was reported in stable condition at United General Hospital in Sedro-Woolley, hospital CEO Greg Reed said.

Sligh said his shoulder was dislocated in the drop into the water, and he found himself "belly deep in water in the truck." He said he popped his shoulder back in and called out to his wife, who he described as being in shock initially as they waited for rescuers to arrive in boats.

The bridge was inspected twice last year and repairs were made, Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson said.

"It's an older bridge that needs a lot of work just like a good number of bridges around the state," she said.

Transportation officials are working on plans for either a temporary or permanent replacement, she said.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending an investigative team.

Jeremiah Thomas, a volunteer firefighter, said he was driving nearby when he glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye and turned to look.

"The bridge just went down, it crashed through the water," he said. "It was really surreal."

Deyerin said the water depth was about 15 feet, and the vehicles half-visible in the water likely were resting on portions of the collapsed bridge.

Crowds of people lined the river to watch the scene unfold.

"It's not something you see every day," said Jimmy O'Connor, the owner of two local pizza restaurants who was driving on another bridge parallel to the one that collapsed. "People were starting to crawl out of their cars."

He said he and his girlfriend were about 400 yards away on the Burlington Bridge when they heard "just a loud bang."

"Then we looked over and saw the bridge was down in the water," he said.

He pulled over and saw three vehicles in the water, including the camping trailer that landed upside-down, he said.

The bridge was not classified as structurally deficient, but a Federal Highway Administration database listed it as being "functionally obsolete" — a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath.

The bridge, which was inspected last August and November, was built in in 1955 and had a sufficiency rating of 47 out of 100 at its November 2012 inspection, Transportation Department spokesman Noel Brady said Friday. The state average is 80, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state's bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington's 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

The bridge was 1,112 feet long and 180 feet wide, with two lanes in each direction, Brady said. There are four spans, or sections, over the water supported by piers. The span on the north side is the one that collapsed. It's a steel truss bridge, meaning it has a boxy steel frame.

The mishap was reminiscent of the August 2007 collapse of an I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people and injured another 145 when it buckled and fell into the Mississippi River during rush-hour.

Sligh was thankful.

His wife was "doing OK" and he had "lots of cuts," he said. "You're kind of pinching yourself and realize you're lucky to be alive."

___ Baker reported from Olympia, Wash. Associated Press writers Chris Grygiel in Seattle and Terry Tang in Phoenix also contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Reading, writing, arithmetic - and PE?

The prestigious Institute of Medicine is recommending that schools provide opportunities for at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day for students and that PE become a core subject.

The report, released Thursday, says only about half of the nation's youngsters are getting at least an hour of vigorous or moderate-intensity physical activity every day.

Another concern, the report says, is that 44 percent of school administrators report slashing big chunks of time from physical education, arts and recess since the passage of the No Child Left Behind law in 2001 in order to boost classroom time for reading and math.

With childhood obesity on the rise - about 17 percent of children ages 2 through 19 are obese - and kids spending much of the day in the classroom, the chairman of the committee that wrote the report said schools are the best place to help shape up the nation's children.

"Schools for years have been responsible for various health programs such as nutrition, breakfast and lunch, immunizations, screenings," Harold W. Kohl III, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"Physical activity should be placed alongside those programs to make it a priority for us as a society," he said.

The report calls on the Education Department to recommend that PE be adopted as a core subject.

It says physical education in school is the "only sure opportunity" for youngsters to have access to activity that will help keep them healthy.

The majority of states, about 75 percent, mandate PE, according to the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. But most do not require a specific amount of time for PE in school, and more than half allow exemptions or substitutions, such as marching band, cheerleading and community sports.

Many kids also aren't going to gym class at school every single day. According to the CDC, only about 30 percent of students nationwide attend PE classes five days a week.

Specifically, the report recommends:

-All elementary school students should spend an average of 30 minutes each day in PE class.

-Middle and high school students should spend an average of 45 minutes each day in PE class.

-State and local officials should find ways get children more physical activity in the school environment.

PE isn't the sole solution, though.

The report advocates a "whole-of-school" approach where recess and before-and-after-school activities including sports are made accessible to all students to help achieve the 60-minutes-a-day recommendation for physical activity. It could be as simple as having kids walk or bike to school, or finding ways to add a physical component to math and science class lessons.

The report also cautions against taking away recess as a form of punishment, and it urges schools to give students frequent classroom breaks.

Schools can do this if they make it a priority, said Paul Roetert, CEO of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.

"We have an obligation to keep kids active," Roetert said in an interview. "We have research to show that physical activity helps kids perform better in school. It helps them focus better in the classroom ... and they behave better in school. So there are all kinds of side benefits."

Kitty Porterfield, spokeswoman for The School Superintendents Association, said nobody is opposed to physical education.

"Everybody would love to see more of it in schools," said Porterfield. "Given the testing and academic pressures for excellence on schools, often physical education slides to the bottom of the barrel."

The idea of putting more of an emphasis on physical education in schools has support in Congress.

Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, plans to introduce the PHYSICAL Act on Thursday. It would recognize health education and physical education as core subjects within elementary and secondary schools. Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Jared Polis, D-Colo., will join Fudge as co-sponsors.

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NEW YORK (AP) -- The nation's record-low teen birth rate stems from robust declines in nearly every state, but most dramatically in several Mountain States and among Hispanics, according to a new government report.

All states but West Virginia and North Dakota showed significant drops over five years. But the Mountain States of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Utah saw rates fall by 30 percent or more.

In 22 states, teen Hispanic birth rates plunged at least 40 percent, which was described as "just amazing," by the report's lead author, Brady Hamilton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What's driving the declines? No one can say for sure. Experts believe the explanation is complicated and probably varies a bit from state to state. The national figure has been falling since 1991, aside from a brief interruption in 2006 and 2007.

The CDC report released Thursday is based on birth certificates for 2007 through 2011. Last year, the CDC announced the overall improvement in teen births: a record low of 31 births per 1,000 teens ages 15 to 19. That compares to 42 births per 1,000 five years earlier.

The new report focuses on state figures in 2011:

- Lowest rates are in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont, each with rates under 17 per 1,000.

- Highest rates overall continue to be in the South, led by Arkansas and Mississippi, each with rates of about 50 per 1,000. In Arkansas, the majority of teen births are to white moms. In Mississippi, the majority are black.

- White teens continue to have the lowest birth rate nationally - about 22 births per 1,000. Black teens saw a larger improvement, but their rate was still more than twice the white rate, at 47 per 1,000.

- Overall, the Hispanic rate plummeted from 75 to 49 per 1,000, now virtually a tie with the black rate.

The teen drop in the last five years coincided with an overall decline in births, which experts attribute to a weak economy that dampened enthusiasm for having children.

Hispanic women have been part of that trend, possibly due to the economy and to illegal immigration crackdowns in some states that reduce the number of young Hispanic females entering the country from Mexico and other nations, said John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health.

That means new immigrants are having less impact on birth statistics, and second- and third-generation families are having more influence.

As time goes on, Hispanics - like other immigrant groups before them - tend to adopt American customs and practices.

"There is more attention on education, career, and the future," said Dr. Janet Realini, head of Healthy Futures of Texas, a San Antonio-based organization focused on preventing teen and unplanned pregnancies.

Hispanic rates, though, continue to be much higher than those for blacks and whites in most of the states with the largest Hispanic populations, including California, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Georgia.

Texas has the highest number of teen births in the nation, with nearly 43,000 in 2011. Nearly two-thirds were to Hispanic moms.

The overall improvement, though, is something to celebrate, said Bill Albert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

"Geography, politics, or policy alone simply cannot explain the widespread declines," Albert said in an email. "Credit goes to teens themselves who are clearly making better decisions about sex, contraception, and their future."

--- Online:

CDC report: HTTP://WWW.CDC.GOV/NCHS/

© 2013 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED. Learn more about our PRIVACY POLICY and TERMS OF USE.