An Oklahoma highway reopened Saturday after being closed for several hours after a bridge over the Arkansas River was struck by a barge.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers closed a portion of Route 59 south of Sallisaw around 1:25 p.m. after a barge crashed into a bridge.
State Patrol officials said no injuries were reported on the highway or on the barge. The bridge crosses the Arkansas River into the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir, not far from the Oklahoma-Arkansas border.
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The expressway reopened to traffic around 4 p.m.
Damage is seen from a barge that crashed into an Arkansas River bridge on March 30, 2024 in Sallisaw, Arkansas. The Oklahoma State Patrol closed the highway south of Sallisaw after the crash and reopened it several hours later. (Dayton Holland via AP)
“Engineers have inspected the structure and determined it is safe to reopen,” the Oklahoma Department of Transportation said in an email.
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A Highway Patrol spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on whether the agency has determined what caused the barge to hit the bridge.
The news comes as engineers worked Saturday to lift a piece of twisted steel from the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland, where a giant cargo ship collided with one of the bridge’s main supports and collapsed into the Patapsco River. This was communicated to me when I started.
