Weekly News Summary For December 19-25, 2005:
The U.S. Engineers, who essentially doubled their workload overnight, deploying over 3,000 men and women to the hard-hit areas of Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, is a resilient organization. They don’t claim to know all of the answers surrounding the hundreds of questions on what caused the breach of the flood control system, but they have converged on the area to provide humanitarian assistance, such as providing water and ice, and investigate, with the help of dozens of other scientists and engineers, what happened to the New Orleans levee system.
Brig. Gen Robert Crear, who oversaw Task Force Hope, and John Paul Woodley Jr., assistant secretary of the Army-civil works, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, chief of engineers, and Major Gen. Don T. Riley, director of civil works, addressed those in attendance of the Lower Mississippi Valley Flood Control Association annual meeting December 8-10 in St. Louis about the status of the Corps hurricane recovery projects….
For the second time in three weeks, well-wishers, marine industry executives and friends gathered in bitter cold conditions Dec. 7 to witness and celebrate a ground-breaking ceremony for a major Paducah marine business operation.
Following on the heels of Ingram Barge Company’s November 17th ground-breaking event (WJ November 28), a bundled and shivering audience again huddled under a large tent, sipping hot coffee in 20-degree temperatures, as Marquette Transportation Company Inc. formally broke ground for a new $2 million headquarters facility at a 2.5 acre site in that city’s Information Age Park.
Consummating a year of negotiations, the new 24,000-square-foot, office and warehouse facility is being built in an office park and light industrial complex located between U.S. Highways 60 and 62, southwest of town. It will replace Marquette’s current riverfront location at the former Igert Inc. offices along South Fourth Street, which was recently sold to the adjacent Paducah-McCracken County Riverport Authority for future expansion….
On December 8 at the sixth annual River Bell Awards luncheon, the Seamen’s Church Institute presented its River Bell Award to the men and women of America’s river industry for their response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
More than 200 maritime executives attended the event, held in downtown Paducah. The luncheon raised over $63,000 to support SCI’s Ministry on the River program. SCI trustee Craig Philip, president of Ingram Barge Company, is the founding chairman of the event.
“We are privileged to recognize their preparation, resourcefulness and response in meeting the challenges posed by these devastating hurricanes,” said the Rev. Dr. Jean Smith, executive director of the Seamen’s Church Institute.
“These two storms brought every conceivable challenge that could have been imagined. If lives, vessels, terminals and cargos were to be protected, the preparations would have to work. And, they did,” she said.
“It was abundantly clear,” she continued, “that an individual award could not begin to acknowledge the outstanding industry-wide effort that was made. All members of the river industry community deserved to share in this year’s River Bell Award.”…
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