A barge-bridge collision this past weekend in St. Joseph comes a week after a similar collision took out a bridge support and killed 14 people in Oklahoma. No injuries and no damage to the bridge was reported in the St.Joseph incident. Ensign Fred Stipkovits with the US Coast Guard office in St. Louis says a barge running into a bridge can happen, and he does not expect the Coast Guard to change barge traffic procedures. Stipkovits says the Coast Guard has certain restrictions when the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers are running high and he says they tellcaptains not to go out if conditions are beyond their skills.
