A runaway barge on the Tennessee River did no damage this weekend, thanks to a tugboat that captured it just 600-800 feet short of the I-75 bridge in Loudon County.
But it could have been bad. Authorities stopped traffic on the bridge Saturday night until the barge was stopped. They also worried about the consequences if the barge hit the bridge and caused structural damage.
It's not the first time that tugboats have raced after runaway barges on that same stretch of river.
On March 28, 1994, at another time when East Tennessee was inundated with rain and flooding was an issue, at least eight barges broke free from the Staley Company on the river.
Three bridges were hit, a railroad bridge, the old Highway 11 bridge, and the I-75 bridge.
10News was waiting with authorities as one of those barges crept closer to the I-75 bridge, and captured video and the sound of a huge crash the moment it hit.
You can see what's probably TDOT engineers frantically trying to see how much damage was done in the immediate aftermath. One man almost goes over the railing in his efforts to see what happened.
The barge did take a huge chunk of concrete out of the bridge support, but engineers determined no major structural damage was done to any of the bridges that were hit that day.