A sunken barge in St. Louis has closed a stretch of the upper Mississippi River to grain and oil barges, the US Coast Guard said on Thursday. In a separate accident on Thursday, a barge carrying coal was sinking near Cairo, Illinois, but the vessel was not in the navigation channel and barge traffic was not affected.
Officials did not know when the river near St. Louis would reopen, but traffic may be able to go around the vessel, said a Coast Guard spokesman. Grain traders expected the closure to last two to three days. A barge carrying corn broke lose from a tow boat at 5 am CDT (1000 GMT) on Thursday, struck the McKinley Bridge in northern St. Louis and sank in the middle of the channel, the Coast Guard said.
The river was closed from mile markers 180 to 184. Ingram Barge Company, the leading US dry bulk goods barge operator, owns the vessel, the Coast Guard said.