Ingram assessing condition of 100 barges below New Orleans

New York (Platts)--30Aug2005

Ingram Barge Co has dispatched "work boats" to assess the condition of
about 100 of its barges on the Mississippi River below New Orleans in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a company official told Platts Tuesday.
Ingram, the largest US barge line, has dispatched the boats to this area with
the reopening of the river at this location Tuesday morning to barge traffic,
said Daniel T Martin, company vice president of sales & customer service.
"We're going down to see if there is salvage work to be done. At this point,
it is too soon to be speculating about any damage to the barges and their
cargo," he said. The cargo in the Ingram barges--some of the barges are
empty--is likely limited to grain and coal, and possibly iron ore, he said.
     Martin said there was no way of knowing when barge traffic might be
flowing at a normal level from the mouth of the Mississippi River at the Gulf
of Mexico, about 95 miles downstream from New Orleans, given the severity of
the damage in the area, with events still playing out. He said that this
stretch of the river was open by the US Coast Guard Tuesday morning, with
traffic limited to barges as ocean-going vessels are still off limits, and
that the Ingram barges were no further than 55 miles down river from New
Orleans. 
     A US Coast Guard spokesman with the Unified Command mobile unit in
Mobile, Alabama, contacted Tuesday afternoon by Platts, said he had no
immediate knowledge of the river's reopening at this point, but pointed out
that his unit had just set up operations and information on the effects of
Katrina was spotty. A Coast Guard spokesman in Washington, DC, also had no
information on the river's reopening.
     Hurricane Katrina slammed into the southern US states of Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama on Monday, causing damage estimated in the billions of
dollars.

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