A barge crashed into a bridge in Galveston, Texas, on Wednesday, spilling oil into the bay, forcing the span to close and prompting the university across the bridge to close its campus for the weekend, officials said.
Texas A&M University in Galveston said Wednesday night that the Pelican Island campus would be closed from Thursday to Sundayquoting a “prolonged bridge outage over the weekend,” according to the university’s announcement.
Aerial footage showed that a section of a railway line along the bridge appeared to have collapsed, with concrete slabs piled onto the barge.
No injuries were immediately reported on the Pelican Island Causeway following the incident, which occurred shortly before 10 a.m. CT in the city of Galveston said in a statement.
Two operators were on the barge at the time of impact, said Spencer Lewis, spokesman for the Galveston County Office of Emergency Management.
Lewis said one of the operators fell into the water but was immediately rescued and the other remained on the barge and was eventually rescued as well. The Texas A&M Marine Unit rescued the operators.
The bridge, which was closed Wednesday, reopened at 7 p.m. CT to ease vehicle traffic, and a large line of cars were trying to leave Pelican Island, Lewis said.
The bridge is open to outbound traffic only, he said.
About 200 people were on the island at the time of the incident and “substantially more than half” were evacuated, Lewis said.
About 450 people – most of them students – live full-time on Pelican Island. Faculty and other workers make up the rest of the residents, he said.
Texas A&M University in Galveston is offering accommodation for students and faculty living on Pelican Island — which is also home to a fishing pier, a naval museum and other industries — but also encouraged those who remain on campus to prepare to leave if necessary.
The university, which held its graduation ceremony last week, briefly lost power on campus on Wednesday but was quickly restored, the school said.
Classes scheduled for Thursday and Friday will be canceled or taught remotely, the school said in its evening update, and encouraged staff to work from alternative locations. Dining services will remain open until 8pm on Wednesday.
The barge that hit the bridge “was carrying a basic petroleum product”, the Coast Guard said in a statement.
The city said: “The collision resulted in an oil spill into the bay. The U.S. Coast Guard is responding and will determine the extent of the spill as well as begin containment and cleanup processes.”
The accident is the latest to plague American bridges and highways.
A container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 6, killing six people.
O Fort Madison Toll Bridgewhich turns 97 years old in July and connects Fort Madison, Iowa, with Niota, Illinois, over the Mississippi River, was hit by a barge on Thursday.
Two weeks ago, Interstate 95 in Connecticut was closed after a tanker truck full of gasoline caught fire and forced the closure of one of the East Coast’s most important thoroughfares.
At the end of March, a family fishing on the Arkansas River, captured video of a barge hitting a bridge near Sallisaw, Oklahoma. And in April, more than two dozen barges broke loose from its moorings and floated down the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, reaching the Sewickley Bridge.
Galveston fire spokeswoman Marissa Barnett said barges pass under the bridge several times a day.
She rejected any comparisons between the Baltimore bridge collapse and Wednesday’s incident.
“People ask if this is like the Baltimore Bridge. That’s not it,” she said.
CORRECTION (May 15, 2024, 9:24 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the last name of the Galveston County Office of Emergency Management spokesperson. He’s Spencer Lewis, not Jones.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
