COOS BAY, Ore. — Given the history of the New Carissa, the effort to remove the last of its wreckage is off to a surprisingly smooth start. Too smooth, perhaps.
“I always hate it when things go well, because that means something bad is going to happen,” said David Parrott, owner and founder of Titan Maritime, the Florida company that landed a $16.4 million contract to remove the wreck.
The weather has been relatively tranquil just north of Coos Bay, and the Titan crew, facing an Oct. 1 deadline, is already slicing up the wreck. With the help of Âextra-long cutting torches, 300-ton hydraulic pullers and two huge cranes, they plan to convert the stern, sunk up to 50 feet deep in the sand, into roughly 1,200 tons of scrap metal.
The New Carissa ran aground near Coos Bay in 1999, breaking apart and spilling 70,000 to 140,000 gallons of fuel oil. After the Coast Guard set it on fire in an attempt to consume the oil leaking from its fuel tanks, the hull broke apart in the surf. The bow came ashore near Waldport and later was towed out to sea and sank, but the stern remained mired in the sand.
In 2001, Oregon successfully sued the ship’s owners and insurers to get them to pay for salvaging the rear third of the ship, even though an expert called by the ship owners said severe injury or death was “virtually an inevitable result.”
Parrot and others testified that the work was doable, and the state tapped Titan for the $16.4 million job.
A visit with Parrot to the wreck Monday reinforced both the enormousness of the job and the danger in salvaging a wreck tilted about 45 degrees to the pounding surf.
Two gigantic barges from Titan Maritime — the Karlissa A and B — are set like stones in the sand next to the ship’s stranded 200-foot-long stern.
On Monday, the crane on the Karlissa A lifted four workers in a yellow bucket onto the shipwreck. They started methodically cutting and lifting, sending up showers of orange sparks.
After they removed the top section, workers Yuri Mayani and Robert Swanson decided to get rid of a thick metal tow rope hanging through a porthole, a relic of the ship owners’ failed attempt to remove the stern in 1999. They attached it to the crane, then Mayani perched just inside the porthole, yanking the rope through with the crane’s help while Swanson worked below.
Just before Mayani pulled through the final loop, Parrot hollered to Swanson: “Clear, Robert, heads up.” Swanson nodded and ducked into a cabin doorway on the deck.
Mayani pulled the loop through — and it swung down, with gathering speed, right to where Swanson had been standing.
Parrot said the riskiest part of the job was setting up the barges. Titan is bringing in a third, free-floating barge this week to allow for easier scrap storage and disposal.
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