Remembering 20 years ago and wondering why anyone thinks ferries are a possibility again
Monday 25 October 2010 at 10:08 pm
Twenty years ago in the early morning hours of Oct. 26, a dredge working in Oregon Inlet was torn from its moorings in a nasty northeaster and slammed into the Bonner Bridge
The U.S. Coast Guard was notified about 1 a.m. from crew members of the Northerly Island who radioed that the dredge was dragging its anchor and was within 50 feet of the bridge. The barge collided with the bridge at about 1:30.
Dare County deputies and Highway Patrol officers raced to close both ends of the bridge and even picked up several crew members who had scrambled up the crane of the 130-foot-tall vessel and jumped onto the 90-foot tall bridge.
All of the vehicles were reported off the bridge by about 2:14 a.m., and the first section of the damaged bridge fell into the inlet at 2:18. Eventually four more sections collapsed and by daylight there was a startling 370-foot gap in the span.
We are always hearing about how we can remember exactly where we were when we learned of traumatic or important events in our lives.
I was a senior in high school between 5th and 6th period classes when we heard the news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot on Nov. 22, 1963. My sister was driving me home from Chowan Hospital in Edenton after hip surgery when we heard on the radio about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
And on Oct. 26, 1990, I had just arrived at my office at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., when I heard that the Bonner Bridge had collapsed – or partially collapsed, as it turned out.
My executive assistant came rushing into my office to breathlessly give me the news. A colleague, who was quite familiar with my attachment to Hatteras, had called to leave me the message.
I laughed. I thought it was a joke.
