Accident
On 25 October 1960, there was thick fog and a strong tide; two barges carrying petroleum (the Arkendale H and the Wastdale H) overshot Sharpness Dock, were carried upstream and collided with one of the columns of the bridge. Two spans of the 22-span steel and cast iron bridge collapsed. Part of the structure hit the barges, setting fire to them. Five people died in the incident. In February 1961 a further span collapsed.
The Western Region of British Railways planned to reconstruct the bridge but after further damage to the bridge in 1961, it considered the bridge to be damaged beyond economic repair. Following the accident, schoolchildren who had used the bridge daily had to be taken to school on a 40-mile detour via Gloucester.
Read more about this topic: Severn Railway Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word accident:
“Is this the nature
Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue
The shot of accident nor dart of chance
Could neither graze nor pierce?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining fate.”
—Augusta Evans (1835–1909)