Coast Guard outlines errors that led to crane striking Talmadge Bridge last summer
A newly released report outlines a fateful miscalculation and other errors that led to a crane striking the Talmadge Memorial Bridge as it was being pushed by a tugboat up the Savannah River last summer.
The incident shut down the roadway connecting Savannah and Jasper County for about three hours, diverting thousands of vehicles midday on Aug. 1. No injuries were reported, according to the U.S. Coast Guard incident report, and officials initially estimated the crash caused $450,000 worth of damage to the bridge. A tugboat named Lona Myrick had departed Fig Island earlier that day and would pass under the bridge as it headed upriver to the U.S. Sugar Savannah Refinery. The boat was pushing a construction barge loaded with equipment, including a track crane, according to the report.
The crane’s arm was raised to hold up one of the barge’s spuds, which can moor the barge to a particular area of the riverbed when lowered. The crane arm struck the center portion of the Talmadge Bridge around 1:15 p.m., the report says, sending the crane collapsing on top of the barge and partially into the river.
Knowing the tugboat would be passing under the bridge, the boat operator had asked the crane operator for the length of the crane arm. The crane operator said the arm was 160 feet long, according to the report, when its actual length was 180 feet.
Based on that incorrect length, the report says, the boat operator estimated the combined height of the barge and crane to be 177 feet — enough to clear the bridge’s air clearance of 184.5 feet at an average tide height.
But the report says the top of the crane reached up to 197 feet, more than enough height to strike the side of the Talmadge Bridge as cars were seen traveling over it. No pollution was reported as a result of the incident, according to the Coast Guard.
The nearly two-mile span was closed for about three hours while engineers “assessed its safety for travel,” the report says. Nearly 20,000 vehicles cross the bridge on an average weekday, according to data from the Georgia Department of Transportation. Drug and alcohol tests performed on the tugboat’s crew turned out negative, according to the Coast Guard report.
The incident report lists a number of “causal factors” thought to have contributed to the collision: the crew lacking formal policies or procedures about moving cranes, the vessel operator not assessing and logging navigation data as required, the crane operator providing an incorrect crane measurement and the tugboat captain relying on a single point of reference to estimate the load’s total height.
It was unclear if the Coast Guard had penalized the company responsible for the tugboat, the family-owned and Savannah-based Myrick Marine Contracting Corporation. A message sent to the contractor on Friday was not immediately returned.
