The US Government ordered an immediate inspection yesterday of all bridges in the country with a similar design to the one that collapsed, after it emerged that the 40-year-old span bridge in Minneapolis had been rated “structurally deficient” two years ago.

Bridge No 9340 was given a 50 per cent rating in 2005 in the Department of Transportation’s national bridge inventory database. The authorities did not plan to replace it until 2020.

Jeanne Aamodt, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota transport department, said that officials were “very familiar” with the 2005 assessment, but that many bridges in America carried a similar rating.

In a 2003 report the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a stark warning that 27 per cent of the country’s bridges were structurally deficient or “functionally obsolete” because of outdated designs. But Mary Peters, the Transportation Secretary, said that it was the first major bridge collapse in America since 1983.

The Minneapolis bridge, built with a single 458ft arch across the Mississippi, carried an estimated 141,000 vehicles a day, sat next to a railway track and was buffeted by fast-moving waters just downstream from a dam. It was undergoing resurfacing work, but officials said that the renovation was not structural.

Tim Pawlenty, the Governor of Minnesota, said that inspections in 2005 and last year had found no immediate structural problems, although there were “some minor things that needed attention”. He added: “They notified us from an engineering standpoint the deck might need to be rehabilitated or replaced in 2020 or beyond.”

The investigation will focus at first on possible cracking from fatigue as well as the potential impact of vibrations from the railway. A goods train was crushed, but it was not clear if it was moving at the time of the collapse.

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