These ship incidents are turning into a real epidemic now. Just a few days after the big container ship took out the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor on March 26, the state of Oklahoma suffered a pair of incidents in which barges ran into bridges spanning lakes:
Here’s an excerpt from that story:
MUSKOGEE, Okla. (KTUL) — New information emerged on Monday of two water-crossing bridge incidents that have happened in Northeastern Oklahoma since Friday.
This information comes after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in Baltimore last week.
On Friday the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT), the Coast Guard, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers closed the Arkansas River channel going under the U.S. 62 bridge, because of fallen material.
On Saturday, U.S. 59 had closures when a barge struck a bridge.
After the collapse of an I-40 bridge in 2002 killed 14 people, ODOT performed a risk assessment of its river-crossing bridges and added pier protection to the bridges that needed it.
"Really large steel drums that are buried in front of the piers and they're filled with either concrete or some other material that's packed into them. And that helps protect the piers," said T.J. Gerlach, an ODOT Spokesperson.
These steel drums are designed to keep barges from hitting the bridge itself.
But on Saturday, a barge did hit a U.S. 59 bridge.
"This bridge is actually a little bit different situation," said Gerlach.
Gerlach says that when they performed the risk assessment, it was not deemed necessary to add any extra pier protection to this bridge.
[End]
As if that weren’t bad enough, another big container ship mysteriously lost power as it was transiting New York Harbor on Saturday: