Loose storm barges in New Orleans from 1 company

A single scrap metal company was responsible for about 70 barges and ships that floated loose in a major New Orleans canal during Hurricane Gustav, with at least a few threatening floodwalls and a bridge, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard said Monday it was investigating whether Southern Scrap Recycling followed a plan for securing ships and barges before a dangerous storm. It also barred the New Orleans-based company from keeping any vessels in the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal — better known as the Industrial Canal — during the rest of the 2008 hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30. It said it will review the order for future seasons.

Southern Scrap removed the last of its fleet from the canal Tuesday.

Company head Joel Dupre said the Coast Guard's order has shut down the workyard on the canal — perhaps for good. The yard employs about 75 workers and hires about 325 subcontractors, he said.

The vessels — mostly barges but also two decommissioned Navy ships — got loose during Gustav last week in the canal, where a floodwall breach was responsible for much of the flooding that devastated the city in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. Three rammed into a railroad bridge precariously close to a floodwall.

Capt. Lincoln Stroh, the Coast Guard's New Orleans sector commander, wrote to Southern Scrap that the "company has not shown the ability to follow (its) Heavy Weather Protection Plan as hurricanes approach this Port."

Dupre has said his company followed a federal mooring plan.

But coastal erosion is "making storm surge worse and worse and it's forcing us out," Dupre said Tuesday. "And we anticipate a lot of political pressure on us to evacuate the area."

The Coast Guard questioned whether the plan was truly followed.

There were fears that another big storm could unleash barges in an unprotected industrial area and sweep them toward a federal flood wall that protects the Upper 9th Ward.

That threat prompted the Coast Guard to issue an unprecedented order for all vessels to be removed from the Industrial Canal in advance of gale-force wind conditions.

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