14 killed when van plunges off Maine bridge

A van is removed from the Allagash River in northern Maine on Thursday.

AUGUSTA, Maine (CNN) -- Fourteen migrant workers were killed Thursday when the van in which they were riding plunged off a one-lane wooden bridge and sank to the bottom of the waterway below, state officials said.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said the van was three-quarters of the way across the bridge when the accident happened.

"It apparently hit a curbing, then went off the road, overturned, and went into the water upside down, landing in about 15 feet of water," he said.

The van has since been pulled from the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in northern Maine and taken to a nearby campsite where the bodies were being examined.

An investigation has been launched into the cause of the crash, and authorities were interviewing the lone survivor of the accident to try to determine further details about the accident, McCausland said.

The men were working with a land management company to clear privately owned commercial land surrounding the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, officials said.

Seven Islands Land Management Co., a family-owned business that manages 1 million acres in northern and western Maine, notified the Maine Warden Service of the accident and the warden service in turn notified state police, a spokeswoman for the warden service said.

McCausland said state police got the call at 8:30 a.m. ET. Both state police and game warden dive units were dispatched.

The accident site is a 2- to 3-hours drive from a paved road, McCausland said.

The Allagash waterway is a 92-mile lake-and-river corridor connecting several large public reserved land units and surrounded by a vast, privately owned commercial forest.

A bridge over the waterway at that point was first built in 1960 to allow loggers access to the forest. Known at first as Poulin's Bridge, it was rebuilt as John's Bridge in the late 1960s.