Broken dredge pipe temporarily closes Port

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By Angela Lauren, KCBY News

Story Published: Jan 27, 2012 at 3:05 PM PST

CHARLESTON, Ore.- Fishermen in Charleston did not have the best start to their day.

The Coos Bay bar was closed Friday morning, but this time not because of weather conditions.

The U.S. Coast Guard informed KCBY just before sunset they received a report of a broken dredge pipe that expanded across the Coos Bay bar.

With the loss of sunlight, The Coast Guard made the call to close off The Port of Coos Bay and not allow any traffic in our out, in fear that a vessel could hit the broken dredge piece.

Commanding Officer, Chuck Chavtur, with the U.S. Coast Guard says, "when the sun came up this morning we found that the pipe was on the north side of the channel. Just outside still stretching into the channel. But we were able to find a position where we could have a boat sitting out there. We were able to open the port back up and allow the fishing boats to transit out using our boat as a reference to go around so they didn't hit the pipe."

The bar opened around 8:00 a.m. this morning.

And because majority of the pipe is under water, The Coast Guard is closing monitoring the area.

Chavtur says, during situations like this communication between fishing vessels and The Coast Guard is important.

"If you are headed outside of the bar and you see The Coast Guard boat out there, we encourage the boats to contact us. The reason why our boat is usually out on that bar is we are getting the conditions, we are making the assessments and we are more then happy to let the fishermen know what the conditions are" continues Chavtur.

The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and The U.S. Coast Guard worked together to fix the problem, and say the pipe has been retrieved.

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