SALLISAW, Okla. — A section of Highway 59 was closed briefly on Saturday afternoon after a bridge was struck by a barge in Eastern Oklahoma.
Authorities diverted traffic for several hours after the barge hit a bridge over the Arkansas River.
According to the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT), the last time this happened to this bridge was in November 2022.
Sequoyah County Director of Emergency Management Jonathan Teague was on the scene after the incident on March 30.
"The first thing I tried to determine was the road conditions," Teague said. "My second worry was that some of the barges that have gotten loose could have been losing their contents. The visual inspection was done on those and they weren't losing their contents."
According to ODOT, engineers were on the scene to visually inspect the damage to the bridge. A quick inspection led the engineers to conclude that only minimal damage had occurred.
"We were very pleased that the inspection just revealed superficial damage to the column that was hit," T.J. Gerlach, ODOT's public information officer, said.
Gerlach added that some concrete did fall off the side of the bridge after being hit. According to Gerlach, the bridge is built to withstand being hit by boats that pass through.
"It was built to standards that were developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s specifically for vessel bridge impacts," Gerlach said. "This bridge is what you might call overbuilt for what it is, but it was built specifically with impacts like this in mind."
Gerlach also said that a risk assessment study, after the I-40 bridge collapse in 2002 near Webbers Falls, found that this bridge needed no additional pier protection.
"The columns are extra thick," Gerlach said. "They're approximately nine and a half feet thick at the waterline itself and then there's webbing in between the columns that should, have something happened to one of them, that load will begin to spread to the other columns to give us time in order to get vehicular traffic off of the damaged portion."
According to ODOT, with weather permitting, engineers will conduct a more in-depth investigation into the bridge to confirm all damage was superficial. Still, Gerlach reiterated that the bridge is open and safe for travel.
One witness who captured video of the barge striking the bridge detailed how loud the noise was.
"The initial hit was very loud," Dayton Holland, who witnessed the event, said. "It sounded like gunshots going off, which was another scary thing. And when the barge hit, they broke apart from each other."
Holland added that she is happy that no injuries have been reported thus far.
"We're just so thankful that it didn't break the bridge," Holland said. "It was scary, honestly, but I'm just glad everyone's okay. Nobody got hurt that I know of."
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