NEAH BAY — A U.S. Navy nuclear submarine severed the tow line connecting an empty fuel barge to a tugboat off Cape Flattery on Saturday, setting the barge adrift for more than two hours in high seas until it could be secured.
The USS Topeka, on routine operations off the Cape Flattery coast, severed the two cables between the Alaska-based tow boat Ernest Campbell and the barge it was pulling about 12 miles west of shore.
No one was injured and there was no damage to the submarine, the tow boat or the barge, the Navy said.
Lt. Barbara Mertz, public information officer at Subbase Bangor, would not say if the submarine surfaced beneath the tow line or if the Topeka was traveling on the surface.
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The rest of the story appears in the Sunday Peninsula Daily News.