A barge struck the Fortress Madison Bridge in Iowa on Thursday and later sank within the Mississippi River.
The incident passed off in a while after 1 p.m., prompting the closure of the close to 100-year-old swing gate bridge, but it surely was once reopened round 4:15 p.m., officers stated. There have been no accidents reported.
Barges attached to a tug boat was unfastened and one collided with the Fortress Madison railroad bridge, KHQA studies, mentioning the Coast Guard.
Video presentations the barge caught up in opposition to the double-decked bridge that connects Fortress Madison with Niota, Illinois.
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A massive floating barge struck the Fortress Madison Bridge in Iowa on Thursday ahead of later sinking within the Mississippi River. The incident brought on the closure of the close to 100-year-old bridge, but it surely was once reopened. (@PurposefulLight / LOCAL NEWS X /TMX)
In some other video, the barge will also be noticed sinking into the river clear of the bridge with a ship along it.
The incident inspires reminiscences of the tragic Francis Scott Key Bridge cave in in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 6 when a Sri Lanka-bound container send hit the construction, inflicting it to fall into the Baltimore harbor, killing six building staff.
Lee County Sheriff Stacy Weber instructed KHQA that whilst Thursday’s incident was once an unlucky scenario, it would had been a lot worse.
“I believe he contained it up to conceivable and I imply, no one were given harm so that is the primary factor,” Weber stated. “We will repair all this different stuff.”
The bridge was once close all the way down to all visitors to permit BNSF to evaluate for injury. The bridge includes a double-track railway at the decrease deck, whilst two lanes of highway visitors are carried at the higher deck. It’s unclear what number of automobiles have been at the bridge on the time or if any trains have been on it when the barge plowed into it.
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A map pinpointing the Fortress Madison bridge. (Google Maps)
Fortress Madison Police Division stated on-line that BNSF Railway, which owns the bridge, qualified the bridge is protected and gave the fairway mild for each rail and vehicular visitors to renew.
A consultant from a barge tow corporate instructed WGEM that the barge was once hauling corn and that it’s owned by way of Ingram Barge Corporate primarily based in Nashville, Tennessee.
In 2022, between 40 and 100 trains crossed the bridge on a daily basis, consistent with The Hawk Eye.
The bridge is ready 1 mile lengthy with a swing span of 525 toes and was once the longest and biggest double-deck swing-span bridge on the earth when it opened in 1927, consistent with the Iowa Division of Transportation.
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In an aerial view, the shipment send Dali sits within the water after working into and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26 in Baltimore, Maryland. Thursday’s incident in Iowa inspires reminiscences of that incident. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Pictures)
The incident comes about 4 weeks after greater than two dozen river barges broke unfastened from their moorings and floated down the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, putting one bridge that had already been preemptively closed and destructive a marina, officers stated.
The boats ultimately have been pinned to the riverbank or went over a dam downstream.
The Related Press contributed to this document.
