The I-40 bridge disaster was a bridge collapse that occurred southeast of Webbers Falls, Oklahoma at 7:45 a.m. on May 26, 2002. Joe Dedmon, captain of the tugboat Robert Y. Love, experienced a blackout and lost control of the ship. This, in turn, caused the barge he was controlling to collide with a bridge support. The result was a 580-foot (176.78 m) section of the Interstate 40 bridge plunging into Robert S. Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River. Fourteen people died and eleven others were injured when several automobiles and tractor trailers fell from the bridge.
Rescue efforts were complicated when William James Clark, impersonating a U.S. Army Captain, was able to take command of the disaster scene for two days. Clark's efforts included directing FBI agents and appropriating vehicles and equipment for the rescue effort, before fleeing the scene. Clark, already a two time felon, was later apprehended in Canada.
An estimated 20,000 vehicles per day were rerouted for about two months while crews rebuilt the bridge. Traffic resumed Monday, July 29, 2002, only two months after the disaster. The reopening set a new national record for such a project, which would normally be expected to take six months.
On Memorial Day 2003, that year on May 26, a memorial statue was dedicated by Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry in Webbers Falls, Oklahoma. The artist, Shahla Rahimi-Reynolds, created the sculpture and attended the dedication.
Famous quotes containing the words bridge and/or disaster:
“Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“The disaster ... is not the money, although the money will be missed. The disaster is the disrespect—this belief that the arts are dispensable, that they’re not critical to a culture’s existence.”
—Twyla Tharp (b. 1941)