Oklahoma Barge Topples I-40 Span

WEBBERS FALLS, Okla. —  One of the nation’s most important cross-country truck routes was severed on Sunday when a barge slammed into an Interstate 40 bridge in this tiny town, knocking a 500-foot span into the Arkansas River and plunging up to a dozen vehicles into the murky waters below.

Divers and emergency workers had pulled two cars and a motor home from the silty water by late evening. Each vehicle contained one body, but officials warned that eight or nine more people may have died and that it could be a day or two before they could reach them all.

The tugboat operator pushing the barge apparently had a seizure and blacked out, Gov. Frank Keating said. With no one at the controls, the barge swerved well out of the navigation channel and rammed into the concrete pilings supporting the bridge.

As many as a dozen cars and two tractor-trailers plunged 100 feet into the river as the bridge collapsed with a thunderous roar about 7:45 a.m.

Several survivors were pulled from the waters within minutes by fishermen. Four were taken to hospitals.

Rescue efforts were then delayed for hours by a storm and the need to shore up the massive slab of concrete that was left balancing precariously atop the barge.

Rescue crews returned to the water in the afternoon, able only to collect items floating on the surface: Clothing. Car seats. Diapers.

Divers received the all-clear to enter the water by early evening. The divers, who worked in teams of six, said most of the vehicles appeared to have piled up, one atop the other, on the bottom of the river, which is only 11 feet deep at that point. Also recovered was a horse trailer, with the carcasses of at least two horses inside.

“We just feel tremendous sadness. We’re all shocked,” said Steve Williams, who manages a nearby state park.

Williams raced to the site with several of his rangers to help with rescue efforts. What he saw horrified him: “Both ends of the bridge were pancaked into the water,” he said. “And in the middle, there was this span of about 500 feet where there was absolutely nothing.”

Coming on a heavy holiday traffic weekend, in the midst of urgent warnings about terrorist threats, the bridge collapse drew quick attention from federal investigators.

A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for barge navigation, said authorities were “treating it like a crime scene until they’re sure it’s not.”

Reporters from around the world quickly besieged the mayor of this modest town of 726 people set in the rolling hills of eastern Oklahoma farm country. “We’ve had calls from England, Canada, France--from all over,” said Mayor Jewell Horne, who doubles as the police commissioner.

Yet authorities from federal agencies quickly moved to dismiss any dark speculation. “Preliminary indications are that this was nothing other than a maritime accident,” said Chet Lunner, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

But there is much more to do than simply determine the cause of the collapse.

Interstate 40, which runs in a nearly straight shot across the country from Barstow to the Atlantic Ocean near Wilmington, N.C., is “a critical piece of the national infrastructure,” Lunner said.

It is the most heavily traveled east-west truck route in the country, he said. The road carries about 113,000 vehicles a day on a structure designed to carry 72,000.

And with the span over the Arkansas River knocked out, it has now been snapped in half.

Repairing the bridge is expected to take six months.

On Sunday, trucks were being diverted to get around the impasse, in a detour of about 20 miles. But Lunner said the delays will have a “major impact” on interstate commerce for days, perhaps weeks, to come.

Locals also expect the traffic snarls to have a major impact on their economy, which depends in the summer on fishermen coming to this lush land of rivers and lakes in search of the abundant catfish and bass.

Charles Mills, a lock operator who passed the tugboat and barge through his lock about eight hours before the disaster, said “everything was normal” at the time.

The tug, which was pushing two empty barges lashed together, was traveling upstream at a normal speed.

And according to the corps, conditions were far from dangerous; in fact, the river was a bit slower and lower than is typical this time of year.

“Nothing was wrong,” Mills said. “Everything was just fine.”

Authorities said the tugboat captain was found at the controls in his wheelhouse after the accident, but it was unclear whether he was conscious at the time. He was still hospitalized late Sunday.

“Two tug mates ... said it was a seizure or a blackout, and the captain hit the bridge,” Keating said. “A number of fishermen down there saw it happen. They said [the barge] veered right into the piling.”

The seven crew members on board were not injured. Shane Guthrie, personnel manager for the tugboat’s owner, Magnolia Marine Transport Co. in Vicksburg, Miss., said the barge was not loaded.

“They just got hold of the bridge span there somehow,” Guthrie said. “We’re still investigating what caused the accident.”

The multi-agency probe, launched Sunday, includes investigators and engineers from local law enforcement, the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Coast Guard and the Department of Transportation.

Built in 1967, the bridge was last inspected a year ago and was found to have no problems, said Terri Angier of Oklahoma’s Department of Transportation.

The bridge was built with barriers that protect some of the bridge’s pilings against precisely this sort of accident, but only on its north side. The tug was traveling upriver from the south. Also, it had strayed so far outside the shipping channel that a protective barrier would not have helped.

Officials had not yet estimated the cost of repairing the bridge. Building an entire new span would carry a price tag of about $20 million, state officials said.

Webbers Falls is about 100 miles east of Oklahoma City, not far from the Arkansas line. On Sunday, the town’s city hall was being used as a morgue.

Times staff writer Mark Fineman contributed to this report.