A barge struck the Douglas Bridge in Juneau on Wednesday.
Terry Tavel was eating lunch at Bill Overstreet Park near the whale statue that’s below the concrete span. She said the barge was sideways in Gastineau Channel and dangerously close to the waterfront.
“I immediately ran out of the picnic shelter because I thought it was just going to wipe it out,” she said.
Tavel, a Coast Guard-licensed captain, said the crew did an admirable job fighting the current to keep the vessel from running into the park.
“However, he was still pretty sideways and as he went, the current was sucking them under the bridge,” she said.
[Sign up for Alaska Public Media’s daily newsletter to get our top stories delivered to your inbox.]
The skipper reversed engines, but the port side of the barge’s ramp support on the bow hit the bottom of the bridge causing visible damage to both the bridge and the boat, she said.
The Coast Guard confirmed it’s looking into reports of a bridge collision involving a tugboat, the Columbia Layne, and barge at around 1 p.m. Wednesday.
The Alaska Department of Transportation confirmed that it was the same vessel that collided with the Douglas Bridge on Aug. 5, 2020. That barge is owned by Juneau-based Channel Construction. The company hasn’t yet returned a call seeking more information about the collision.
The Columbia Layne was also involved in a 2016 incident in British Columbia when the barge it was pulling sank while carrying a load of sand and gravel through the Inside Passage.
The Coast Guard says it’s investigating the latest collision. Officials didn’t immediately say whether Channel Construction was cited for the 2020 collision.
The state’s Department of Transportation maintains the Douglas Bridge and has dispatched its own team to check for damage.
“Basically what would happen at this point is the bridge engineers and the maintenance operations team would go out and inspect — just to see if there’s any structural damage,” said DOT spokesperson Sam Dapcevich.
He said a team from the state is likely on its way to the bridge now. The last time this happened, inspectors got a GoPro and hooked it up to see underneath the bridge.
“They crawled through the bridge and looked for cracks, even hairline cracks,” he said.
