Oklahoma, barge collides with bridge: Baltimore’s nightmare returns

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A barge crashed into a bridge in the US state of Oklahoma. This was reported by local authorities, specifying that the accident caused no casualties and traffic was first blocked and then reopened after safety checks. According to what the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (Okdot) published 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. Only 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 are still 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 hit a pylon of the structure along the river. Highway I 40, the most important in the Midwest state. In that case it was an illness on the part of the tugboat captain that caused the accident.