Weekly News Summary For January 9-15, 2006:
Refloating a loaded 440- by 136-foot drydock, partially grounded by storm surges during Hurricane Katrina, was the largest-weight salvage recovery project on inland waters in the storm’s wake and the most complicated, said W.A. “Beau” Bisso IV, president and chief operating officer of Bisso Marine Company LLC.
Bisso Marine Company, now in its 116th year and a recognized leader in inland and offshore marine salvage, heavy-lift operations and construction projects, was contracted by Bollinger Shipyards to tackle the refloating task.
The drydock is located at Bollinger Shipyards’ Gulf Repair Yard on the Industrial Canal in New Orleans East. Flood waters, estimated at 13 feet, covered the yard.
The challenge of refloating the “drydock” was that it was, in fact, four separate drydock sections joined together. Making the refloating more complicated was a 120,000-barrel barge on the drydock.
Total light ship displacement of the drydock and barge was estimated at almost 10,000 tons. Portions of the drydock were sunk, while other sections were aground….
On January 1, the sale of White International’s marine subsidiary, Garvey Marine Inc. to American River Transportation Company (ARTCO) became official.
Lita Jimenez, executive vice president of White International, said ARTCO is now operating all of the former Garvey Marine locations. She said it was a complete asset purchase, so ARTCO has also taken over all of Garvey’s former equipment. Jimenez said about 98 percent of former Garvey Marine employees were hired on by ARTCO.
Garvey Marine was introduced into the marine industry with the acquisition of its first harbor service in 1988. Bill Arnold, president of Garvey Marine, said in a statement, “We began with two boats and serviced only the Ottawa harbor. Each year we expanded our service area and our boat fleet.”
Garvey Marine operated fleets in Pekin, Morris, Channahon, Seneca, Ottawa and Lemont, Ill., and also had a construction division. The firm owned 17 harbor boats.
ARTCO operates fleeting sites in Peoria and Peru, Ill.; Winona, Minn.; Cassville, Wis.; and Clinton, Iowa.
“It was a good fit for ARTCO,” Jimenez said. “It was beneficial for ARTCO to take on our interests with our employees and a benefit for us. I’ll miss them (former Garvey Marine employees). It was a fun business to be in.”…
Construction on a $355 million, 110- by 800-foot lock at Marmet Locks and Dam on the Kanawha River continues on pace for lock operations to begin in March 2008 and contract completion in 2009.
The project allows for the construction of the lock on the right descending bank landward of the existing locks, both 56- by 360-foot lock chambers. Both will be put in use as auxiliary lock chambers, built in 1934, following completion of the larger lock.
Resident engineer Dennis Hughes said the project is “business as usual” as the joint firm of Kokosing/Fru-Con LLC moves ahead with construction. Hughes said the concrete pouring is going well and despite some weather setbacks early on in construction, the construction partnership has stayed on schedule, in fact. Hughes said the project could even be considered slightly ahead of schedule….
Lock operators, salvage crews, Coast Guard personnel and emergency responders in the Paducah-Cairo area took no holiday between Christmas and the new year as salvage work continued on sunken towboats at Empire, Ill., and Paducah, and a deckhand drowned on New Year’s Eve above Cairo.
Continuing in its yo-yo type of operations of the past several months, the navigable pass at Ohio River Lock and Dam 52 at Brookport, Ill., was raised on December 21, only to be lowered again on the 29th. With each maneuver, traffic was influenced by the change in navigation conditions, causing either a backlog of vessels waiting to traverse the locks or shallow channel conditions created in the pool above the lock when depths approached the critical stage at which the pass was closed….
The amazing rescue response of the Coast Guard during the 2005 hurricane season earned it ABC News’ People of the Year award.
In a report filed by ABC’s Bob Woodruff for “World News Tonight,” he said, “Many Americans were unaware of who they were or what they did until this year. But when Hurricane Katrina hit and the waters began to rise, U.S. Coast Guard members moved in by air and by sea, risking their lives to save thousands of others.”
More than 5,000 Coast Guard personnel conducted rescue operations, using 62 aircraft and 131 cutters and small boats “as they lived up to the motto Semper Paratus, or Always Ready,” Woodruff said.
Normally, the Coast Guard saves an average of 5,500 people a year, he reported. “Within two weeks of Katrina, it had rescued or evacuated more than 33,000 people under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.”
Woodruff quoted Petty Officer Joel Sayers, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, in the report. He said Coast Guard rescue swimmers “were some of the first on the scene in Louisiana and Mississippi, rescuing victims before the storm had even passed.”…
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