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My point of view.
Being a Chief Engineer in the Merchant Marine, and no I don't work for Bouchard, I think you have to cut them a bit of slack with your opinions of fines.
This incident was only I believe the 3rd or 4th documented for BT in the last 18 years or something along those lines. And those other incidents were extremely minor. That is a pretty impressive record.
This was a pure accident, human error which happens, I didn't hear of any illegal drug use found etc.
BT runs a neccesary service. This trip it hapened to be #6 heavy oil for power plant use. A plant which provides ALL of us electricity.
Bouchard plays by the regs. So don't get mad at them because the barge wasn't doublehulled. It is still legal to operate this type of barge. Unless of course you want to take up a collection and build them a newer fleet. Or double you electric bill.
The only troubling fact I had was the initial estimates of fuel lost. But these were estimates and trust me, when you have unkown hull damage, color cutting sounding tapes with water finding paste to find water ingress/oil loss...is all estimates for it is constantly changing.
And one last note. The use of double bottoms and doubles hulls does not completely solve this problem. After 2006 or when ever the OPA '90 regs takes effect...it is when tankers must be double hulled. This does not prevent lets say a container ship burning heavy oil from storing thier heavy bunker oil in thier double bottom tanks. So....if this ship grounds, the heavy oil goes into the water, go figure.
Beamie
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