Barges broke loose from a vessel on the Mississippi River Thursday morning and struck the Interstate 55 bridge at Caruthersville, Missouri.
The Tennessee Department of Transportation shut down motor traffic on the bridge for about two hours. Spokeswoman Nichole Lawrence says the bridge did not suffer any damage.
“After the inspectors got there, they did their initial inspection and went through their process and found it was OK and safe. There was no damage,” Lawrence said.
The US Coast Guard held up river traffic until about 10 a.m. while they collected the barges, according to the Coast Guard’s Lieutenant Ryan Gomez.
“The barges were no longer under the full control of the vessel. It took them about a four-and-a-half hour span to collect all of the various barges and have them accounted for,” Gomez said.
Twenty-eight barges broke loose. Twenty were carrying salt and eight were empty. The Coast Guard is conducting an investigation to determine what caused the barges to come free and how many hit the bridge.
