Click here if video above fails to play
Interesting raw video (above) showing the rescue Monday of two bridge inspectors trapped under Rhode Island’s Sakonnet River Bridge after a boom truck tipped. Below, fire chiefs from Tiverton and Portsmouth discuss the unusual rescue operation.
Two men became stuck in a bucket dangling off Rhode Island’s Sakonnet River Bridge, after a boom truck tipped onto its side Monday afternoon.
The men were doing inspections around 1:30 p.m. under the bridge, when suddenly, the truck rolled over. Photos from the scene show the truck on one side and the boom of the crane curling under the bridge.
Both of the men were transferred into another bucket and hoisted back to the bridge around 2:50 p.m. while Sky5 was overhead.
Eyewitness News spoke with the fire chiefs from both Tiverton and Portsmouth on Tuesday – one day after their crews responded to a report of two men trapped in the bucket of a boom truck that had overturned on the Sakonnet River Bridge.
According to Chief Robert Lloyd of Tiverton and Chief Michael Cranston of Portsmouth, the operation was too big for any one person to handle, so agencies at the local, state and federal levels had to work together.
“I’ve been doing this for a while, but I don’t think we’ve had any training of a boom truck tipping over,” Lloyd said.
For two hours, the workers were suspended 80 to 100 feet above the water. Officials said their worst fear was that the truck would tip over the edge and fall into the water.
