Holy Ship!

Last night, around 8:00 PM something wild happened!  The whole county is all a-buzz about it, too!  A bridge in our county was hit by a cargo ship and collapsed.  The bridge is the Eggner's Ferry Bridge and it crosses the Kentucky Lake connecting Aurora to LBL/Land Between the Lakes.  It is a bridge I came to know oh-so-well when I was in college because it was one of the two bridges I crossed on my way to/from Clarksville.  I hated that bridge.  I always held my breath when I crossed it because it was so gosh-darn narrow!  I was sure if I passed a car on it I would be going over into the lake.  Just sure of it.  Sadly, it is the major way people get to Murray, and a lot of people that live "over there" (i.e. the next county over) work "over here" (in Murray).  Now these people are having to detour more than 30 miles out of their way to get to their destination. 

When one hears of a working bridge collapsing, the first thing they think is victims.  People in their cars in the water.  Scary stuff.  This bridge, as I mentioned above, is a major thruway for some 2,800 vehicles per day and has pretty high traffic, so why wouldn't there be people affected?  Somehow or another, there were no victims!  (Thank you GOD!)  No cars went into the water and no one on the cargo ship was injured.  Pretty miraculous, really, once you see the pictures of the bridge and ship.  One of Keagan's teachers works for the Marshall Co. Rescue Squad on the search-and-rescue boat and was on the scene most of last night; I talked to her this afternoon and she reassured me that they used sonar all around the area of the water and no cars were found.  She also sent me some pretty awesome pics of the scene.

Before I show you her pics, Josh and I drove out as close as we could get tonight and took some pics of the "big picture" with my zoom lens.  Josh wanted to see for himself the damage. :)

And here are the pics that Ms. Valery gave me:
This is the Delta Mariner (a stock photo; same ship, but not at the location of the accident).  The Delta Mariner is 312-ft long by 82-ft wide and was built to ferry Boeing Delta IV rockets for NASA.  I couldn't find what it was carrying on this particular day.  Guess it is really irrelevant.

Picture of the search and rescue boat and crew doing their job last night:

The ship in relation to the bridge, from multiple angles.  You can see the section of the bridge that collapsed laying right on the bow of the ship:

Close-up of the section of bridge laying on the ship: 

Seriously scary stuff, isn't it?!  Someone who was crossing the bridge at the time of the collapse said that as they came up on the section that collapsed they knew something wasn't right because there was just a black-hole where the bridge used to be (it was pitch black night and raining at the time).  Can you imagine being that person?  YIKES!