Scaffolding collapsed on the Loop Parkway drawbridge in Nassau County just before noon Wednesday, throwing construction workers into the waters of Reynolds Channel below. New York State Police said the collapse happened at 11:50 a.m., leaving one contractor unaccounted for in the channel while seven others suffered injuries.
According to Newsday, first responders were performing CPR on another injured worker at the scene. A separate Newsday count put the number of injured contract employees at eight, so the exact total remains unclear even as rescue efforts continued. Nassau County's dive team was deployed to Reynolds Channel to assist with the water rescue, the outlet reported.
The 2.65-mile Loop Parkway was shut down in both directions while police investigated, according to the same Newsday report. ABC7 New York likewise reported that construction workers fell into the water while making repairs on the bridge, noting that one person was missing and describing the incident as breaking news that would be updated as more details emerged.
A Bridge With a Long History of Repairs
The scaffolding had been part of an active rehabilitation project on the span. Construction on the Loop Parkway bridge, along with two others on the Meadowbrook State Parkway, had been underway since September as part of a contract Newsday valued at $15.9 million with the state Department of Transportation, though a New York State announcement in June described the broader effort to rehabilitate three parkway bridges as a $16 million project. The work includes maintenance on the bridge decks, replacement of bridge joints, installation of new railings and the addition of navigation lighting, per the same account.
The drawbridge itself opens roughly 2,500 times a year for marine traffic, state transportation officials have said. Two months before the collapse, NYSDOT had announced that the left lanes in both directions at the bridge over Reynolds Channel would close starting around 10 p.m. that Tuesday for the rehabilitation work, with the restrictions expected to remain in place through the rest of 2026. Speed limits on the affected bridges were also reduced from 55 mph to 45 mph during the closures, which NYSDOT attributed to safety reasons.
Decades of Malfunctions on the 1934 Span
The Loop Parkway bridge was constructed in 1934 and has long been described as subject to frequent repairs and malfunctions, Newsday has reported, a characterization echoed in a 2022 report on the structure. The bridge's last major construction push came in 2017, as part of a $22 million rehabilitation project that used state grant funding to replace steel beams and motors on the aging span.
Even before this week's collapse, state officials had been weighing the drawbridge's long-term future. Newsday reported in May 2022 that NYSDOT was conducting a $250,000 study examining whether to replace the Loop Parkway drawbridge entirely, underscoring how long the structure has strained under the weight of repeated fixes. A separate report from the LI Herald confirmed that NYSDOT had begun the $16 million bridge repair project on sections of Loop Parkway and Meadowbrook Parkway this fall.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the fate of the missing contractor and the full scope of injuries among the workers had not been confirmed, and the cause of the scaffolding collapse remained under investigation by state police. This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
