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OHP Suspends Efforts to Retrieve Sunken Vehicles

KWGS News File Photo

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The Oklahoma Highway Patrol has suspended efforts to recover submerged vehicles in the McClellan-Kerr Navigation channel in Rogers County.

OHP Capt. George Brown said Thursday that troopers recovered a stolen pickup truck before the operation was delayed.

Brown says the decision to suspend the operation is due to several conditions — including nearly concrete-like silt surrounding some vehicles, some vehicles being submerged at distances that wreckers are not equipped to recover and underwater debris that makes it unsafe for divers.

Brown says OHP's Marine Enforcement Rescue and Recovery unit will work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to bring in heavy equipment at a later date to recover the vehicles using a Corps barge equipped with a side lift crane to make lifting the vehicles easier and safer.