Preparations to Move the Bright Field

Stranded freighters crew fighting boredom

Article summary by Gary Polson RBBI

While a visiting crew tries to deal with the mushy corn and tries to patch the cargo hold, the original crew has been on board since December 14, the day of the crash.. The 28 member crew has been visited twice by a local ministry for seafarers. Members of the Stella Maris Maritime Center have brought chess, checkers - regular and Chinese - and toiletries.

"That is the biggest problem they have, boredom and a little bit of fear," said Deacon Gilbert Smith, director of the center on Constance Street in New Orleans. The center is part of the Apostolate of the Sea and wants to make the crew comfortable during its unplanned stay in New Orleans.

The crew is tending to basic maintenance and other duties per a representative of Clearsky and COSCO, the ships owners.

The ship's owners are soliciting bids from local shipyards for complete repairs, a spokesman said.

Emergency repairs hit a problem earlier in the week when one of the freighters 7 cargo holds flooded after a hole below the waterline was exposed. Workers had started unloading the 128 million pounds of corn to make moving the ship easier. Once the hole is patched, the Coast Guard [plans to let the repair set for 24 hours before pumping water our of the ship, Lt. Cmdr Doug Blakemore said Friday.

Pac Brian Industrial Divers of Baton Rouge is handling the patching, not Bisso Marine of New Orleans as previously reported.

The Coast Guard has pulled most of its people from the site, leaving only one or two on board. "There is not a lot happening right now - and we want it that way." Coast Guard Cmdr. Ken Parris said.

Aboard the freighter, the crew is being well cared for, Smith said Kerr Steamship Co., the shipowners local agent is making sure crew members have enough food and supplies, with Stella Maris providing the extra.

The Center provided some reading materials, a box of National Geographic magazines that was a big hit.

"They were more interested in the books than in talking to us," said Smith, adding that the language barrier made communication difficult.

They got by with " a mix of broken English and sign language."

The investigation will re-start Jan 6 when the joint Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board hearing resumes.

In addition, all equipment on board that remains to be tested, such as control panels, has been sealed with evidence tape to make sure no one tampers with the settings, Parris said.

After the investigation, which Parris estimated will take another two to three weeks, the two agencies will reach separate findings.

The Coast Guard will issue its report in three to six months. The safety board will probably release its official findings in a year or two, Parris said.

Workers give up on fixing ship's rip

Article summary by Gary Polson RBBI

Workers have given up on trying to patch a gash below the water line on the Bright Field. Instead, they are going to try to remove enough corn to raise the ship out of the water so it can be removed from the rubble, a Coast Guard spokesman said Monday.

Instead of applying an unwieldy 50-foot steel patch to an 18-foot tear and a 30-foot dent behind it, workers will try to make the freighter ride higher on the water by unloading some of the 120 million pounds of corn, First Class Petty Officer Patrick Cuty said. As the corn is removed, water will be pumped in to keep the ship stable.

Workers are going to try to unload the corn this week, but probably won't move the Bright Field to a shipyard till Jan. 7, Cuty said. He said a cruise ship which normally docks a few hundred feet from the Bright Field is due in port Saturday the refloating operation will occur after that ship departs.

"We're still trying to work out the details, but that's what we're shooting for," said Cuty, who is overseeing the removal of the ship for the Coast Guard. "We're pretty sure (removing the cargo) is all it will take. We don't think there's any more damage, but on the dock side that's still questionable. We haven't been able to send divers down there. Too dangerous.

A company spokesman said the ship will probably be repaired in Violet, a few miles downriver. The main damage to the vessel spans about 50 feet, none of it visible. The worst damage is a gash 3 feet wide and 18 feet long.

As it sat Monday afternoon, engines running, holding the attention of dozens of tourists, the Bright Field was operational, capable of leaving its impromptu berth with a lighter load and the help of a few tugs, Cuty said. But officials also are waiting to move the ship until the damaged parking garage can be shored up.

Although in all likelihood nothing would happen if the vessel were moved today, Cut said some engineers have suggested the mall and the garage could collapse if the ship is disturbed.

The lower floors of the parking garage which were demolished by th Bright Field, get much of their strength from a series of support cables. Normally under tension, the cables called support tendons, have been broken and slackened by the collision.

Removing the ship could cause the floor to shift, bringing down the walls. Workers are resizing the cables to fit what is left of the floor and retightening them.

Meanwhile the ship's crew has been free to take in the sights of New Orleans, Cuty said. He even accompanied a few of them on a Christmas Day foray thought the French Quarter. "We went to the French Market," he said. "They all bought fresh fruit and made phone calls home. They hadn't been able to call home since the accident."

"Fresh fruit and phones," he said. "Those are two things in short supply on a ship."

Workers to remove corn off Bright Field Friday

Article summary by Gary Polson RBBI

Workers will begin removing more corn from the Bright Field Friday in an attempt to raise the hobbled freighter and a gash in its cargo hold above the waterline, a Coast Guard official said Wednesday.

"We can raise it without patching the hole,"said Lt. Cmdr. Doug Blakemore, who is overseeing work on the Bright Field. "There is plenty of buoyancy on that ship. But the hole was just to big for us to patch with the equipment we had."

The work is complicated by the ship still supporting some of the damaged mall and experts continue to assess the stability of the structure.

Blakemore said that about 4,000 tons of corn need to be removed from two of the ship's undamaged cargo holds to raise the ship high enough so it can be pried away from the Riverwalk wharf.

Blakemore said the ship could be raised as early as Monday (Dec. 6), after which the owners, Clearsky and COSCO plan to move it with tugboats three miles downriver to Violet, where the remainder of the cargo will be unloaded and the ship repaired.

Once the Bright Field is removed from the wharf, two barges will immediately replace it and serve as a staging area for demolition work on the damaged Riverwalk buildings, he said.

A hole in the ship's first cargo hold is now 12 feet below the river's surface, Blakemore said, which has allowed more than 1.5 million gallons of water flood the damaged hold. Workers started unloading the grain last week but were hampered as more holes were found and stability inside the hold became uncertain.

It became clear this week, however, that it was not feasible to repair the ship at Riverwalk, he said. "Once the ship is gone," he said, "the Coast Guard's job is done."

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