"The best thing we can say is no one was hurt," began Mayor Bob Buckhorn in addressing reporters today, hours after a cable on a drilling rig aboard a barge snagged the Kennedy drawbridge span around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. After getting caught in the span, the rig then slid onto a tugboat pushing the barge.
"It is not an easy fix," the mayor confessed. Neither he nor Brad Baird, the city's public administrator and public works director, would venture to guess how long it would take to repair the structure, which is a major artery for traffic flowing in and out of downtown Tampa during a workday.
The Coast Guard and Florida Dept. of Transportation had officials on the scene, but as of 11 a.m. today there was not a consensus on the best solution to correct the problem.
The bridge had been raised so that the crane, mounted on the barge and pushed by the tugboat, could pass underneath. But though there is a 5-foot span on each side of the opened bridge to pass through, the crane got too close to the west side of the bridge, snagging the cable.
The drill rig was being operated by Johnson Bros. Corp. for construction of the Kennedy segment of the Tampa Riverwalk. That's the same Johnson Bros. Corp. that was fined over $10,000 for dumping concrete waste into the Hillsborough River.
Baird said that the 1-inch steel cable is under a lot of tension, comparing it to a cable on a garage door. "It can snap and result in a fatality," he warned, which is why going up on the bridge and severing the cable is not an ideal scenario.
And while it looked like the drill rig was sinking, Baird said the high tide was keeping it afloat — for now. "If we don't get it secured, there's more of a possibility of the drill rig rolling into the Channel."
When the cable is cleared, the bridge will still need to be inspected by FDOT.