Weekly News Summary For September 12–18, 2005:
According to various accounts, the 25-foot wall of water that accompanied Hurricane Katrina up the Mississippi River broke loose 300 or so barges that were fleeted around Myrtle Grove and Davant, La., re-shuffled them, if you will, and when it receded, plopped them back down, mostly on the levee.
Although there was obviously a huge surge that came upriver, for someone who was on the Lower Mississippi River throughout the hurricane, it didn’t happen all at once.
Capt. Bob Alonso of McAllister Towing & Transportation Company Inc., New York, had his tug Colleen McAllister and barge Barbara Vaught at Point Celeste, an open anchorage about 41/2 miles below Davant. He had only recently finished loading his barge with roughly 18,000 tons of coal and grain. With him were five McAllister personnel and two men from Teco Ocean Shipping, for whom he was on charter.
The tug is 117 feet long with a 14-foot draft. It has 4,200 hp. The notched barge measures 420 by 80 feet.
"On August 27 we lashed everything down on board, moved everything that was movable inside, dropped five shots of chain on the anchor of the barge and prepared for the worst," Alonso said, as he recounted how he and his crew rode out the hurricane.
"Winds started picking up on the 28th, about 35 mph. around 10 in the morning. By 9 that night, it was up to about 50 with gusts of 65. Around midnight we cranked up engines in case we started dragging anchor.
"The winds increased to more than 120 mph. and we did start to drag anchor. We dragged anchor upriver about a half-mile. It just continued getting worse. In the morning we had continuous winds of 120 and gusts of 144.
"We were wired into the notch of the barge. When we fell broadside to the seas that were running about eight feet in the river, we started breaking wires and had to break out of the notch.
"About 15 minutes after that happened, we noticed a large number of blips on the radar, coming downstream. It was approximately 50 to 60 hopper barges that had broken loose upriver coming down on us…."
The Port of New Orleans informed the maritime industry September 4 that the Mississippi River was open in one direction to ships with a draft of 35 feet during daylight hours.
"The Port of New Orleans’ riverfront terminals survived Hurricane Katrina in fairly decent shape," said Gary LaGrange, port president and chief executive officer. "Although they are damaged, they are still workable once electrical power and manpower is available."
LaGrange said that almost all of the port would be dedicated to military relief vessels in the next several weeks. Commercial vessels are expected to return by the end of September.
The picture painted by LaGrange showed the need for numerous repairs. Cargo containers remained strewn about at the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal and the Nashville Avenue Complex. Two gantry cranes at Napoleon and Nashville were expected to have damage to electronic components. The other two gantry cranes at the two terminals are expected to work once they have electric power….
With his office in Bay St. Louis and home in Pass Christian, Miss., Lane DeBardeleben couldn’t have been nearer the eye of Hurricane Katrina when it slammed ashore August 28. He and his son run Equipment Chartering Company Inc., which owns three towboats, the Leslie Geismar, Melissa Anne and Nonnie.
"Everything in our area was just wiped clean. It was like a war zone," said DeBardeleben from his daughter’s home in Baton Rouge. He and his wife, their son, daughter-in-law and grandson had evacuated to a hotel in Daphne, Ala.
The day after the storm, DeBardeleben and his son returned to Pass Christian to see what had become of their homes and office.
"We couldn’t get all the way there. We had to do a lot of walking to get to our house," which is totally gone, he said. It was located on waterfront property….
Hurricane Katrina has not only affected Ohio & Tennessee River traffic patterns, it has also changed Paducah’s shoreline.
Conspicuously absent from Ingram Barge Company’s riverfront operation headquarters is the firm’s large training facility barge, which just three days previous to the Katrina’s arrival in New Orleans, had served as a welcoming and staging area for a christening event in honor of three renamed towboats.
The training barge and an idled towboat were dispatched to New Orleans to serve as a temporary housing facility for as many as 30 displaced Ingram employees. Ingram chief operating officer David Sehrt said between the barge and the towboat, as many as 45 people can be accommodated. He said the training barge has a kitchen, dining room and satellite television, which may help the stranded employees feel a little more comfortable. While awaiting the arrival of the barge and towboat, some Ingram employees have been temporarily housed in a couple of recreational vehicles, he said….
Dramatic live television coverage of Coast Guard rescue swimmers dangling from helicopters to pluck stranded New Orleans residents from rooftops began soon after a levee gave way in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Lifelong residents of New Orleans have long feared effects of the water from hurricanes more than the wind. As Hurricane Katrina crossed South Florida and headed into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the steering currents of the Jet Stream and high-pressure systems that could divert the growing storm away from the Crescent City were nowhere to be found. The projected track of the massive storm continued to move westward, from an early prediction of the Florida panhandle.
As Hurricane Hunter reports showed sustained winds reaching Category 5 at, 175 mph., residents and authorities feared this might be the "Big One."
Many residents started evacuating early. By Thursday morning before the Monday landfall, hotel rooms were unavailable in Shreveport in the northwest corner of Louisiana and into Arkansas and Tennessee. Hotels booked up as far west as Houston and Dallas in Texas….
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