The National Park Service has announced that popular tourist attraction, the USS Arizona Memorial, in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, will be closed to visitors for several days following a collision on Wednesday.
According to CNN, the USS Arizona Memorial will be closed until at least June 4 after the dock was struck in an incident involving tugboats that were guiding the nearly 900-foot-long USNS Mercy through the harbor.
"Initial visual assessments show that the dock was moved about 10 feet toward the Memorial," said Navy Region Hawaii in a statement posted to its official Facebook page. "A small area of concrete was damaged where the dock's ramp joined the Memorial."
"The dock's ramps and railings were also damaged," the organization added.
The memorial's floating dock has already been removed, but officials are still working to assess the extent of the damage. As a result of safety concerns stemming from the accident, visitors will have to settle for seeing the memorial from a distance aboard Navy boats along Battlefield Row.
Military.com reported that the incident, which is currently under investigation, occurred around 7 a.m. local time (1 p.m. ET) on Wednesday.
The USS Arizona Memorial was dedicated more than a half century ago, two decades after it was sunk during the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
As many as 5,000 people visit the memorial every day, per CNN.
Here's the complete statemest issued by Navy Region Hawaii on Wednesday:
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