Kentucky Bridge Collapses After Being Struck By Cargo Ship 1/27/2012

I heard about this on the news this morning.

Kentucky is starting to run out of bridges.
You know about the one in Louisville that they shut down for emergency repair don't you?
The I- 64 bridge crossing the Ohio River.

I was wondering,since they were in the wrong channel,were they waving at friends and relatives at the time,like what happened to that other big boat,you know.

reply to post by kdog1982


There is another bridge around Paducah that has been limited to 3 tons.
Kentucky needs some serious work done on it's bridges..

oops. like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

I know here in the tri-state the creeks and rivers are very swollen and the Ohio river is on the rise. I would assume the Ohio river feeds the Kentucky lake which will attribute to higher water levels which probably didn't help matters any. I'm pretty sure all rivers flow south off the Ohio except that bizarre Licking river which flows north.

The captain should have known his channels, with or without navigational lights on the bridge.
definite operator error. and it's going to affect the locals for quite some time.

as the delta mariner had previously made a sucesfull passage under this bridge , the cause of this incident is pretty ovbious , crew error

1 - they navigated the wrong channel [ the lack of nav lights on the bridge is irrelevant ]

2 - they were running ` light ` with insufficient ballast

3 - flood warnings were ignored [ the river authority must share the blame for this ]

Update:

They are building the replacement bridge span across from where I work, so I thought I'd snap a picture.

They are in the process of loading it onto a barge, and the cranes will be loaded on barges in the next few days. It's been interesting to watch the progress over the last couple weeks.

reply to post by isyeye


It's amazing what they can put together in a crisis,but it takes 40 years to come up with a plan to build a new bridge here in Louisville.