BUFFALO, N.Y. — Earlier this year, a cargo ship lost control and took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. The community continues to rebuild.

While bridge strikes of this magnitude are rare, they're not unprecedented.

“A lot of history here, for sure,” said Mike Casella, a senior tour guide in Buffalo.

The Buffalo River has plenty of stories to tell. One of the more notable for Casella is that of two freighters: the MacGilvray Shiras and the Michael K. Tewksbury.

“This happened on Jan. 21, 1959," Casella said. “We are following pretty much the exact path that that ship took.”

A path that would eventually lead to destruction.

It was a sight not dissimilar to those from Baltimore back in March.

“Here’s a picture of some of the damage,” Casella said, pointing to a mess of metal and rubble.

In Buffalo, naturally, it was the weather that played a big role.

“We had a January thaw and all the ice in the river starts melting," said Casella. "Well, then we have a hard freeze.”

Drifting ice caused the Shiras, at 450-feet long, to break from its lines and travel down the river.

“It is kind of remarkable that the ship went all that distance, made two 90-degree turns and never bumped into the sides of the wall of the Buffalo River and never stopped,” he added.

It didn’t take long to meet the Tewksbury, a freighter 95-feet longer than the Shiras.

“Then, she decided she wasn't going to play nice,” Casella said.

A second freighter was now drifting in the Buffalo River.

“I always try to picture it going backward. Middle of the night, no lights on. It's a ghost ship,” he said.

Efforts were made to stop the ships, or at least raise the lift bridges blocking their path.

The Ohio Street Bridge was already up for construction, letting the freighters pass through.

Further upstream at the Michigan Avenue Bridge, it was a different story.

The bridge keepers there had clocked out and were having drinks at a local bar.

It was too late.

"They started to raise the bridge. At about 11:17 in the evening, the Tewksbury contacts the deck of the bridge right about in the center, knocks the deck of the bridge into the river, [...] and the the Shiras comes in and lodges the Tewksbury together," said Casella.

It caused massive flooding in the area.

“You can see this is where the ice built up," said Casella, pointing to an old picture of the damage.

It eventually also led to changes on a bigger scale.

“The maritime changes came with how much insurance and who is going to be responsible," Casella explained. "It also had a lot of safety regulations about how to tie up the ships."

It took about two years to rebuild the Michigan Avenue Bridge.

As those in Baltimore continue their efforts after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, Casella knows the two incidents aren’t the same.

“This mishap could have been prevented in a lot of ways. [This] was 1959. This was not the Dark Ages," he said. "When you get to the Baltimore incident, that seemed more like a technology failure to me.”

But as they both go down in history, the lessons we can take away from either, are notable as well.