WHEN TENBRIDGE FELL INTO RIVER
Cities located on rivers across the country likely breathed a sigh of relief last week that the tragedy on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge didn’t happen in their town.
Chattanooga, with five automobile bridges, one railroad bridge and one walking bridge spanning the Tennessee River, must have been among them.
But we have had a partial collapse on one of those bridges — though without the tragic circumstances that occurred when a container ship with a sudden loss of power hit the bridge in Maryland.
The incident occurred 108 years ago this month on the railroad bridge — known by some as Tenbridge — which crosses the river just west of Chickamauga Dam, which didn’t exist at the time.
Rather than anything hitting the support columns of the bridge from below, the load of steel underframings on the Queen & Crescent freight train crossing the bridge at 10 p.m. shifted, crashing into the second southbound span and causing it and 10 loaded freight cars to tumble nearly 60 feet into the river.
Miraculously, no one was killed, although, as the Chattanooga Daily Times reported, there were some near misses.
“Two hoboes [later determined to be three] who were riding the rods of cars on the span fell into the river when the crash came,” the March 18, 1916, newspaper reported, “but they managed to reach the shore unhurt. A man in charge of a car loaded with horses and immigrant household goods had a narrow escape, as his car was the second behind the wrecked span.”
Sixteen train cars had passed the span when the load shift occurred, and 28 were behind it. One was hanging over the chasm in the bridge.
An engineer on the double-headed train said he’d heard no noise when the cars went into the river but thought the air hose had broken because the air gauge showed compressed air in the tanks was escaping, so he brought the engine traveling at only eight mile per hour to a stop.
In addition to the damage to the bridge and the loss of the train cars, which were filled with coal, brick, liquor and the aforementioned underframings, the wreck also brought down the railway’s telegraph and telephone service for the division. The loss to the railroad in bridge and cars ultimately was said to total $50,000, with at least $10,000 more in freight.
As amazing as the lack of injuries in the accident was the speed in which the bridge — begun in 1877 and then property of the city of Cincinnati and leased by the city to the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railway company — was repaired.
By morning, crews arrived at the site for cleanup, according to the Southern Railway Historical Association. Within 13 days, with the help of 150 men from Vang Construction Co. in town constructing the John Ross (Market Street) Bridge, the repairs creating a temporary wooden trestle were completed. A passenger train, The Royal Palm, crossed the span without incident on March 30, and business as usual returned.
The March 19 newspaper reported how the head of Vang Construction had presented himself at the scene and offered the services of his company, which were accepted. Construction trains with bridge builders and engineers had been dispatched to the scene, where their cars would serve as sleeping, eating and cooking quarters. Included was an “electric light plant on wheels” that would facilitate night work on the bridge. The United States engineer in charge of the Tennessee River already had given his permission for the work to proceed on removing the wreckage from the river.
We can’t imagine how long such repairs would take today, with the need for a lengthy National Transportation Safety Board investigation and its report just the tip of the iceberg.
Indeed, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said last week the Key bridge rebuild “will not be easy, it will not be quick and it will not be inexpensive.”
The Tenbridge bridge itself, officials said in the days following the accident, had had a regular inspection the previous October and was “found to be in first-class condition.” Also pending in Congress at the time was permission for the railroad to build a new double-track structure. The go-ahead for the new bridge came by the end of the month, and it was completed in 1917.
Newspaper archives didn’t immediately turn up any other major incidents involving Chattanooga’s bridges where all or part of the spans collapsed, though an odd incident occurred in July 1977 when one or more persons “hotwired” the controls to the Market Street Bridge and were able to move the center span several inches.
A online Tennessee Department of Transportation report from 2017 lists 10 bridges in Hamilton County in “poor” condition, including the Market Street Bridge, which is the only one in which any river-going vessel might ever be in danger of hitting.
Even if such a tragedy as the Baltimore bridge accident never happens here, we trust local officials have emergency plans in place for such a contingency and that state inspections assure all spans remain safely navigable.