Displaced barge pushed back across U.S. 90, into Sound
By DON HAMMACK
SUN HERALD
GULFPORT - The beach in West Gulfport shook under the straining of three
large bulldozers and other heavy equipment Thursday afternoon.
They were pushing a 360-ton barge, washed across U.S. 90 by Hurricane
Katrina, down a temporary stretch of railroad track for the last 200 feet of its
journey back to its usual environment in the Mississippi Sound - one that
doesn’t require a street address.
R.J. Corman Derailment Service specializes in train-wreck cleanup but has
found a new niche market. It moved 10 barges off the CSX railroad tracks in the
Mobile area after Katrina, but literally broke new ground in scope and
efforts here.
“We learned a lot more last night than we did over in Alabama,” said Joe
Flynn, a service specialist for R.J. Corman.
The barge moved about 250 yards from the vicinity of 38th Avenue across U.S.
90, thanks to old-school techniques. Workers used untreated telephone poles
as a rolling mat under the barge between 5:30 and 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The barge reached the water Thursday afternoon through the work of 18 men
operating three large bulldozers pushing from the stern, four mobile sidebooms
pulling with cables around the back of the barge and other support equipment.
Economics make it the better business decision for American Commercial Barge
Line, a barge company based in Jeffersonville, Ind., to move it rather than
chop it up and build a new one. New barges cost about $500,000 and there’s a
two-year waiting list for construction.
Its barge had about 1,500 tons of aluminum ingots worth $2.5 million on
board, which had to be offloaded before the barge moved.
The two companies teamed up on five of the barges in Mobile.
“They did good work, so we hired them here,” said Terry McDaniel, a
coordinator from ACBL.
T