Bridge debris shuts down river

The Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau remained closed to barge and boat traffic Friday as a contractor struggled to remove the steel wreckage of the old bridge.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said the work was taking longer than expected. The navigation channel, which runs near the Missouri shore, had been scheduled to be closed to river traffic for 24 hours after Thursday morning's demolition. On Friday, officials first revised the schedule and said the river would be opened by 3 p.m. Then it changed to 8 p.m.

Friday, a Coast Guard official said it was unclear when salvage work would clear the navigation channel.

"We just want to make sure we have a good safe channel for boats to get through," said Roger Wiebusch, bridge administrator for the U.S. Coast Guard in St. Louis.

A Coast Guard duty officer said late Friday that the contractor is working around the clock clearing away the debris. He said Coast Guard, river industry officials and others involved will meet at 8 a.m. today and assess their options.

State and Coast Guard officials said the added damage from almost 1,000 feet of the bridge unexpectedly falling into the river Thursday didn't put debris into the navigation channel and was not delaying the salvage operation.

However, the 671-foot span that demolition experts intended to drop into the river was not coming up as planned.

The contractor, Midwest Foundation Corp. of Tremont, Ill., worked overnight Thursday to remove the steel spans in the main channel.

"It is kind of a tangled mess down there," said Missouri Department of Transportation engineer Stan Johnson. "The stuff is kind of intertwined with each other. It's kind of like a log jam."

Johnson said the contractor brought in additional equipment and divers to attach cables to help with the removal of the steel beams.

Murky water made it hard even for the divers to see the beams.

Coast Guard officials said they wanted to make sure all the steel debris had been lifted out of the river before letting boats and barges proceed.

Lt. Patrick Mounsey of the Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Paducah, Ky., said it's important to get all the steel beams out of the water. "Otherwise you can rip open a barge," he said.

As of late Friday morning, Wiebusch estimated that more than 20 northbound and southbound tows were halted along the river, waiting for the salvage work to be completed.

The river closing didn't hurt operations at the Southeast Missouri Regional Port near Scott City. The port is south of Cape Girardeau, and the demolished bridge and its barge traffic is bound for destinations farther south, said Beverly Smothers, port financial manager.

Smothers said she could see some northbound tows pulled off to the side of the river. Once the river opens up, the tows will move out, she said.

"Everything should clear out here pretty quickly," she said.

The River Explorer hotel barge, which was supposed to head south at noon, stayed docked at Cape Girardeau Friday. The visitors have been taken on tours as they wait out the delay.

MoDOT's Johnson said it would be next week before the contractor, state highway officials and the Coast Guard would look at how best to remove the second and third spans.

The 76-year-old Cape Girardeau bridge was torn apart shortly before 7 a.m. Thursday by explosives that were supposed to take out a main span of the no-longer-used bridge while leaving two other spans to be demolished later.

But the blast, which dropped the main span into the river, also damaged the other two spans, leaving them partially submerged in the water.

The debris in the river also had an impact on land, the Illinois State Police reported. Ouida Haralambidis, manager of Horseshoe Tavern in Olive Branch, Ill., was crossing the bridge in a Ford pickup truck and apparently was looking at the activity in the river when she hit the inside of the concrete median, causing the air bags in her truck to deploy.

Haralambidis was taken to Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau. An employee at the Horseshoe Tavern Friday evening said that Haralambidis was out of the hospital and a little sore, but otherwise uninjured.

Staff writer Linda Redeffer contributed to this report.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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