Three workers installing part of a water pipeline plunged 50 feet into the fast and cold Arkansas River on Wednesday from a construction platform slung underneath the Interstate 430 bridge, authorities said.
Rescue efforts quickly turned into a recovery operation when the three men, all from Texas, were presumed to have drowned.
The 5,000-pound-plus platform, attached just south of the bridge's halfway point, gave way and landed in about 20 feet of water at 10:57 a.m.
Just before 7 p.m. workers using a crane pulled the scaffolding from the river. Only one body was found in that operation, Pulaski County Deputy Coroner Garland Camper said.
Had the workers been following standard safety protocols, authorities said, they would have been tethered to the platform, which, despite their wearing life vests, was heavy enough to drag them underwater.
North Little Rock and Little Rock firefighters and the Pulaski County sheriff's office water patrol initially searched for the men but found nothing. Within two hours of the first 911 call - which came from a fourth worker on the bridge - authorities had already begun calling their efforts a recovery of dead bodies.
For more information see today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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