A white box truck flipped over the guardrail of the Interstate 10 bridge in LaPlace on Thursday morning and landed upright in the swampy marsh below, trapping its lone occupant inside. First responders got the call around 11:11 a.m., and what followed was a technical rope rescue that required St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office SWAT officers to rappel down the bridge structure to reach the injured driver.
The driver could not climb out of the truck on his own because of an injured arm, according to the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office. As reported by WWL-TV, deputies determined a standard extraction was not possible given the truck's position in the marsh below the elevated span, so SWAT personnel trained in technical rope rescue rappelled down to reach him directly. Those same officers are also cross-trained in emergency medical response, which allowed them to begin treating the driver's arm injury as soon as they reached him.
The sheriff's office said the driver was safely recovered from the marsh and taken for additional medical care. The crash itself remains under investigation, and no further details about what caused the truck to go over the railing have been released.
A Bridge With a History of Water Rescues
Thursday's rescue came just three weeks after another dramatic extraction on the same stretch of elevated highway. On July 13, St. John deputies waded into a canal off I-10 in Garyville and broke a window to pull four trapped occupants from a nearly submerged car, according to L'Observateur. Deputies reportedly had to remove their body-camera tactical vests before entering the water in that incident.
The three-mile elevated portion of I-10 spanning the Reserve Relief Canal in LaPlace is officially known as the Spencer Chauvin Memorial Bridge, a designation signed into law by then-Governor John Bel Edwards, per L'Observateur's earlier reporting. The bridge honors St. John Parish District Fire Chief Spencer Chauvin, who was killed on the span on August 28, 2016, when an out-of-control bus struck emergency responders at a minor crash scene, throwing three firefighters off the railing into the water below. Fellow first responders and citizens climbed 30 feet down ladders to pull the firefighters from the water, according to Firehouse Magazine. In January 2018, a St. John Parish jury convicted the unlicensed bus driver on three counts of negligent homicide in that crash, which also injured more than 40 bus passengers, according to WAFB Channel 9.
Narrow Shoulders on a Major Freight Corridor
The LaPlace bridge connects directly into the I-10 Bonnet Carré Spillway Bridge, an 11-mile twin concrete trestle completed in 1972 that ranks among the longest bridges in the country, elevating the highway over wetlands between Lake Pontchartrain and major parish corridors, per World Atlas. Traffic safety reporting has identified this stretch of I-10 through LaPlace, including elevated sections near LA-3188 and I-310, as a recurring high-risk crash hotspot because of narrow bridge shoulders and heavy freight traffic, leaving little room for driver error during a collision.
The corridor has seen other serious incidents beyond vehicle crashes. In December 2021, a Bell 407 helicopter struck overhead power lines in heavy fog and crashed onto the highway structure and surrounding water on the same elevated span, knocking out electrical power to roughly 20,000 customers in the area, WWL-TV reported at the time.
Specialized Training Behind the Rescue
The St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office maintains dedicated SWAT and training facilities in LaPlace equipped for technical rope rescue, high-angle extractions, and emergency medical response, according to the St. John Parish Sheriff's Office. Those facilities are used for routine tactical and technical instruction, training that put SWAT officers in position to safely reach Thursday's driver in marshland below the bridge deck where conventional roadside rescue equipment would not have reached him.
