Baltimore's nightmare returns: barge against bridge in Oklahoma

A barge crashed into a bridge in the US state of Oklahoma. This is what local authorities reported, specifying that the accident caused no casualties and that traffic was first blocked then reopened after safety checks.

According to what the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (Okdot) posted on its X account, US Highway 59 was closed on the Arkansas River, south of Sollisaw, due to the collision. The causes of the accident are currently unknown. Just last Tuesday, a merchant ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing it to collapse, an accident in which six construction workers remain missing.

On May 26, 2002, in the same Arkansas River, also in Oklahoma, 14 people died and eleven were injured when another bridge collapsed, causing ten vehicles to fall into the water after a tugboat pushing two barges struck a pylon of the structure along the river. Highway I 40, the most important highway in the Midwestern state. In this case, it was an illness of the captain of the tugboat which caused the accident.

No injuries were reported on the highway or the barge, according to state patrol officials. The bridge crosses the Arkansas River where it enters the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir, which is not far from Oklahoma’s border with Arkansas.

The highway reopened to traffic around 4 p.m.

“Engineers inspected the structure and found it safe to reopen,” the Oklahoma Department of Transportation said in an email.