Hurricane Ida made landfall in Southeast Louisiana on August 29th, 2021, on the 16th anniversary of the infamous Hurricane Katrina. Titled a mighty category 4, the storm ripped across the state leaving destruction in its tracks. Hardly any industry was left untouched, and the marine industry was no exception. From cargo covers blown off barges to barges and boats being completely sunk, the river took a huge hit from this ferocious storm. As many struggle to recover, the end is still in the far distance.
Hurricane Ida certainly left its mark on Louisiana, being dubbed the most 2nd most intense and damaging storm to make landfall in Louisiana. Due to its destruction, it halted almost all cargo transportation services in the lower Mississippi for days. For customers and transporters alike, the halt in services was defeating. The travel restrictions and capacity limitations took a toll on everyone’s bottom line and left an already exhausted team feeling hopeless. Nevertheless, the river is resilient. For weeks now, crew boats and tug boats have flooded the Mississippi and other intercoastal waterways alike trying and recover and repair barges and boats damaged from the storm. Crews from both in state and out of state have been working tirelessly to ensure that transportation providers are back to operational capacity once again. In recent days, the river has opened, and capacity restrictions have been lifted. While there is still work to be done, there is hope in seeing the river moving somewhat normally again.
The massive destruction Ida has left in her wake has given Louisiana and other states alike plenty of work to do in the meantime, but also in the future. Due to the many barges and boats that took damage, repair yards have been flooded with requests. For some, their equipment might not be repaired for months, if not years. Equipment that can travel is being rushed up north in hopes that they will beat others to the repair yards. Others are waiting until things calm down to further pursue repair efforts. One thing is for certain, repair yards will have their plates full for a very long time.
While the recovery workload is a great thing for repair yards, it is not so great for barge owners. With shipyards being filled with Ida related damages, there is not much space for day-to-day incidents that need repairs. This backup could cause reasonable damage to your bottom line even after the storm has passed. Johnson Marine recommends that you allow someone to regularly inspect your barges for maintenance issues and apply temporary repairs that might be needed as soon as possible. Waiting a day to make a tiny repair could turn into waiting months for a big repair.
Like mentioned before, we know that the river is resilient. A month and a half post-Ida, we are seeing the river recover just in time for the harvest season. While there is still a lot of work to be done, hope is rising as we see river operations returning back to normal.