On a Bridge That Wasn’t

WEBBERS FALLS, Okla. — The sun was at his back, the humidity was rising and Rodney Tidwell had the cruise control set at 70 mph as he headed west Sunday morning on Interstate 40, bound for Reno with a truckload of hoses. Then he was falling.

“There just wasn’t nothing under me,” the 35-year-old truck driver said Monday, a blue cap covering cuts in his scalp and his arm in a sling to protect several broken ribs.

Down he went, 62 feet, to the brown-green Arkansas River, then a few feet more before the cab of his 18-wheeler settled into the silt. That’s the last thing the father of three from Ripley, Miss., remembers.

Tidwell was one of the few motorists crossing the bridge shortly before 8 a.m. who had luck on his side. He appears to have freed himself from the crushed cab of his truck and a fisherman competing in a bass tournament helped drag him to shore.

Perhaps a dozen motorists died after a barge rammed pilings holding up the bridge, collapsing nearly 600 of its 1,988 feet.

Rescue workers hauled a fourth body, that of a woman, from the water Monday afternoon before halting their work because of thunderstorms. In early evening, the search resumed and divers pulled out three more victims.

Hampered by visibility of less than a foot and strong currents--even after spillways were closed upstream to slow the flow--divers employed sonar in an effort to map the scene and locate bodies.

Meanwhile, investigators from numerous state and federal agencies, including the National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI, sought to determine what went wrong.

Traffic was rerouted off the South’s primary east-west thoroughfare, sending truckers, commuters and holiday travelers as much as 30 miles out of their way. The new routes weaved through tiny towns with names such as Gore and Sallisaw, bringing gridlock unheard of in the rural areas.

Traffic on the state’s primary inland waterway also was halted indefinitely in the area.

Business boomed at some gas stations and convenience stores that have always been just off the beaten I-40 path, while many on the interstate but beyond the detour signs were all but empty. State officials, who hope to have the bridge rebuilt in six months, said they were uncertain how much the disaster will cost.

But with warnings going out to travelers to avoid eastern Oklahoma, and with major trucking companies rerouting drivers, the economic damage seems likely to be great.

It is almost certain to affect western Arkansas and perhaps other states on both the highway and waterway.

“The flow of commerce is on our minds and we don’t want to interrupt it for too long,” said Coast Guard Lt. Natalie Magnino.

Sunday began as a bright, warm day, with holiday traffic on the bridge estimated to be up 50%, to 30,000 vehicles per day. The tugboat, the Robert Y. Love, was headed north with two 495-foot-long barges to be filled with petroleum products.

About 7:40 a.m., 30-year veteran tug pilot Joe Dedmon spoke with some of his seven crew members and lined his vessel up to pass through one of the river’s boat channels.

The crew members then departed the wheelhouse, investigators say. The craft was pushing upriver about 5 mph.

Tidwell was cruising westward, as was Kay Blandford of Southerland Springs, Texas. She was heading home from a rodeo in Fort Smith, Ark., just 20 miles back, following two friends in another vehicle. Her friends were towing a trailer with four horses aboard.

Truck driver James Bilyeau of Conway, Ark., was just ahead, heading east.

The barge began sliding westward, out of the channel, at 7:43 a.m. Investigators say Dedmon, 61, may have suffered a stroke or other ailment and appears to have passed out at the wheel.

Preliminary tests showed he had not been using drugs or alcohol. He was still hospitalized Monday.

Before any of Dedmon’s crew members realized what was happening, it was too late.

The massive barge took out three of the bridge’s 12 support pilings. Hundreds of tons of concrete and steel collapsed with such a roar that fishermen and neighbors for more than a mile in every direction thought there had been an explosion.

Several vehicles dropped with the concrete.

Max and Goldie Alley of Broken Arrow, Okla., plummeted 40 feet in their Dodge Dakota pickup, landing on a slab of the freeway.

From their vantage point--he with crushed vertebrae and she with broken ribs--the couple watched as car after car sailed off the precipice into the water, landing on top of those that preceded them.

Tidwell, the Reno-bound truck driver, scrambled out of his seat belt. In seven years of driving professionally, he said he’d never once worn it until Sunday. He had no idea why he put it on, but “it saved my life.” The fisherman sloshed to his aid.

Two other fishermen pulled Bilyeau from his cab. “He was in really bad shape,” said Randy Graham. “I don’t know how he hung on like he did. I said, ‘You’re all right. We got you.’”

Bilyeau remained hospitalized Monday but had called his rescuers to thank them.

Blandford spent much of Sunday and Monday in this tiny town, where friends and relatives of the missing gathered at City Hall, hoping for miracles.

Over and over, she dialed her friends’ cell phone. No one answered.

A truck matching the one they were driving went into the water, a witness told police.

Rescue workers pulled the carcasses of three horses out of the river on Sunday. And on Monday, someone called the state police to report the body of another horse floating in the river downstream.