Oil Spilt After Fuel Barge Hits Bridge in Galveston, Texas

Another American bridge has been struck by a vessel, this time in Texas. Yesterday, a barge owned by Martin Petroleum collided with a bridge pillar in Galveston, causing an oil spill and closing the only road to a small neighboring island.

According to the Galveston County Navigation District, a tugboat operator pushing two barges lost control in high tide with strong currents.

The impact sent pieces of the bridge, which connects Galveston to Pelican Island, tumbling onto the barge and shut down a section of the waterway for oil spill cleanup.

Pelican Island is home to Texas A&M University at Galveston, a shipyard, and industrial facilities. The university announced that the campus would remain closed through Sunday due to an "extended outage of the bridge through the weekend."

Aerial images showed a section of a rail line alongside the bridge appeared to have collapsed, with slabs of concrete piled on the barge.

This accident occurred seven weeks after the Dali containership crashed into a support column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 26, killing six construction workers and causing the bridge to collapse into the Patapsco River. Cleanup authorities in Baltimore have postponed plans to move the Dali to next Monday.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a preliminary report on the Dali accident this week, revealing that the federal agency is collaborating with parties across the US to assess bridges and determine if pier protection needs improvement.

Data analysis by USA Today shows that at least 2,600 bridge strikes have occurred in US waters since 2002, the earliest year for which data is available. Three of these collisions were fatal, resulting in 16 deaths. Most incidents, however, were minor, involving a ship's antenna or mast hitting a bridge, or a barge clipping a bridge's protective fender.