Unsecured Barge

by Sandra Cassidy

Responsibility for billions of dollars worth of damage to 90,000,000 people and or their homes may lie not with hurricane Katrina but with those who failed to secure a big red barge that was heard exploding through the Industrial Canal Levee after the area had seemed to be spared.

Owner, Ingram Barge Company is the largest barge fleet in the United States, and has already been defeated in a motion to limit its liability. The damage occurred after the storm was passing and the area in question had been spared. Several witnesses report that they heard the barge scraping against the still intact levee then an explosive sound was followed by a sudden onset of torrential flooding devastating Chalmette, Meraux, Violet and Arabi, all areas of the Lower Ninth Ward and Western part of St. Bernard Parish. The water was rushing in from Lake Pontchartrain, the Industrial Canal and the Mississippi Gulf Outlet.

An on duty New Orleans pumping station employee reported that 'the streets were dry until they heard the explosion-- then there was a sudden onset torrential flooding'.

Attorney Robert Evans says eyewitnesses exist, one of whom has already been deposed, and they claim they saw the barge crash through the intact floodwall with an explosive sound and the streets were un-flooded until that time.

A key issue in the lead case Mumford, filed in U.S. District Court Eastern District of Louisiana, is proximate cause. Did the defendants, which include barge owner, Ingram Barge Company; Lafarge North America Inc. the terminal owner where the barge was moored; towing company Unique Towing and Zito Fleeting which outfits the barge, negligently moor the barge and fail to remove it once unloaded or did the barge merely float through an existing gap in the east-side Industrial Canal floodwall?

According to court documents the barge had delivered its cargo of cement on August 26, 2005 to a nearby terminal a full two days before Katrina hit. The barge was tied to the dock and a loaded barge was tied to it. This mooring configuration was deemed unsafe by Edward Busch, terminal manager, as an unloaded barge was not seaworthy in a storm. A tug boat was called to reverse the positions so the empty barge was on the outside and affixed to the stronger loaded barge which was affixed to the dock. During that process it was also determined that there was not enough slack for a two part line and additional lines were not affixed because Lafarge ' had not contracted and paid for them'.

Dan Mecklenborg, chief legal officer for Ingram said an initial examination didn't reveal any significant damage to the barge, now resting against a house near the levee. "It seems to us likely that the flood wall failed, and the barge was sucked through and didn't ram a hole in the levee," Mr. Mecklenborg said. He said the barge had already delivered its cargo of cement to a nearby terminal when Katrina hit, and that it would have been the terminal's responsibility to secure it in advance of the storm.

As the storm reached 145 mile an hour winds the huge steel hull of the 200 foot long barge became a water-borne missile capable of causing the 500 foot breech in the levee according to the Army's report. The barge broke a section of the levee that was recently upgraded, and was not the earthen levee common to New Orleans, but rather a vertical concrete wall several feet thick. The  Army's feasibility study concludes that such a barge experiencing  100 mile an hour wind pushing at the side of it as it floated down the canal could cause it to blow against the canal's opposite wall, which runs perpendicular to the levee floodwall, and cause a breech in the canal wall thus compromising the levee.

Although the storm was of legendary or Biblical proportions when it hit it was actually a category 4, not 5 storm as predicted.

With 'half of Louisiana underwater and the other half under indictment' there are ample competitors for cause including a claimed intentional explosion theory where a diver retrieved debris under the levee covered with explosive material; the design-defect theory of a levee 'built on oatmeal' that had sunk so low it was only 11 feet high against the 28 foot surge; the unfinished job theory whose levee upgrade was stopped by a noise lawsuit; and, of course, with 80% of New Orleans underwater, 3000 boats cast off and 125 of them blocking roads--the God theory.

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