‘It just makes me cry now’
Runaway barge leaves boathouse, dock owners with expensive mess
SWEENY — Debi and Spanky Boutell watched helplessly from their back deck as the massive steel barge pinballed from one side of the San Bernard River to the other.
Then they heard the unmistakable sound of wood snapping like toothpicks as the barge moved past their boathouse.
“I was standing over here at our place, all of a sudden we looked down there and we just hear these timbers break and my roof came off and started floating downriver,” Spanky recounted. “It’s probably in the Gulf of Mexico by now.”
The runaway barge — 140 feet long, 45 feet wide and weighing 476 tons — was one of two barges and a tugboat that came unmoored on Aug. 28 in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and went careening down the San Bernard River through Brazoria County.
At least 16 docks and
boathouses were demolished during the rampage. Now, property owners are bracing for a fight over who will pay for the damage.
The barge was moored at a terminal for Houston-based Phillips 66. A spokesman for the refinery, Dennis Nuss, said the owner of the barge, GSD Companies, and the owner of the tugboat, M&C Oilfield Services, both based in Louisiana, claimed full responsibility for the damage. The Phillips spokesman declined to comment on the timeline of events, including whether the refinery gave the companies ample warning to get the barge and tugboat off the river ahead of the storm.
M&C Oilfield Services did not respond to several requests for comment.
Coy Williams, the executive director for GSD Companies, said claims are under review.
“It’s our company policy to not comment on pending or potential legal matters,” Williams wrote in an email. “However, we can say that we are aware some property owners along the San Bernard River are making damage claims against our company, and we are currently in the process of reviewing those claims.”
Both companies have hired an attorney, Scott Breitenwischer of Houston. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
‘It’s a nightmare’
The spud barge — named for the tall, cylindrical pipes on the vessel’s perimeter that are driven into the floor of the river for increased stability — had been docked at the Phillips 66 terminal, less than 3 miles upriver from the Boutells’ home.
The barge was contracted by Phillips to dredge the bottom of the river around the terminal. The spud barge was connected to a “pot barge,” a smaller vessel used to dispose of the sand and silt dredged up from the river. The barges were still docked at the terminal when Harvey made landfall in Texas on Aug. 25.
At some point on Aug. 28, the two barges and tugboat became unmoored from the docking terminal and floated down the river, the rising waters pushing the spuds up from the riverbed and setting it on a path of destruction.
The barge crushed the wooden pylons of Kevin Sheehan’s dock and boathouse on the Brazoria side of the river. It bounced back to the Sweeny side of the river and decimated Brian Rose’s dock while folding the roof of Terry and Shelly Stubbs’ two-story dock like an accordion.
At some point in the hours after the barge came loose, the U.S. Coast Guard and Brazoria County Sheriff ’s Office responded to the scene, along with employees from the barge company and Union Pacific railroad. The railroad company was worried that the barge would take out a railroad bridge about 2 miles downriver.
According to a half-dozen residents who live along the river, employees from the barge company managed to chase the barge and hop onto it from a johnboat, taking control of the tugboat and finally anchoring the barge to Josh Huffman’s bulkhead on the Brazoria side of the river.
The spuds dumped mounds of sand on his land.
“We were putting our property on the market — it was done, graded, beautiful,” Huffman said. “This is costing me the mortgage I’m paying, on top of the mortgage I’m paying for the land. It’s a nightmare.”
Repair costs add up
More than three months after the runaway barge ran amok on the San Bernard River, the 16 property owners who sustained damage are still trying to pick up the pieces.
The Boutells’ house sits about 20 feet above the normal waterline at the top of a hill on the Sweeny side of the river, an area that local residents refer to as “the tunnel” because of the bulkheads that line both sides of the river bank.
In the late afternoon of Aug. 28, all they could see from their deck were the treetops poking out of the water like heads of broccoli and the wayward barge. A neighbor, Arthur Mayfield, called the house.
“I thought I saw your boathouse roof move,” Mayfield told Spanky Boutell.
An adjustor estimated roughly $63,000 in damages to the Boutells’ property.
“What do they expect us to do with all this sand?” Spanky Boutell wondered aloud recently, pointing to the sliver of dock he was able to salvage. “What’s left of my dock was completely covered. The half you see we actually had to shovel that off. It’s not fun; that sand’s pretty heavy.”
The walkway that led to a stairway down to Kevin Sheehan’s dock and boathouse is now a plank to nowhere, the collapsed roof of his boathouse slung over the bannister of the staircase to the river bank. His tab for the damage is roughly $62,700. Across the river from Sheehan, Brian Rose’s missing dock will cost him $45,000 to replace.
Terry and Shelly Stubbs got hit even harder — a whopping $145,000 in damage. With concrete pylons and a covered upper deck, the Stubbses’ dock was built to outlast just about any cataclysmic weather event, but not the force of a steel barge.
Standing next to his dock, Terry Stubbs pulls out his phone, flipping through pictures of his kids jumping into the river, celebrating birthday parties, and using the rope swing that still hangs from the ceiling of the dock’s second level, dangling next to a pylon knocked crooked by the barge.
“My dock is only six years old; I built it with pilings that are supposed to last 100 years in saltwater,” Stubbs said.
“These other folks built their’s with wood pilings which won’t last as long, and some of them are 20 years old. They’re perfectly fine, work great but you think about it, some of these folks are grandparents. This is their little slice of heaven down there, and this barge comes down and bowls it over.”
Footing the bill
The lack of a swift response from the parties responsible for the barge has sowed further confusion and frustration.
Shelly Stubbs believes the breakdown in communication is a calculated play by the barge and tugboat company to force the affected river residents to take legal action. She wonders if the companies would rather take their chances in a lawsuit against a group of overextended property owners than pay to repair hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
“I don’t understand why they have an attorney,” Shelly Stubbs said. “They have an insurance company, why do they need an attorney? Unless they’re going to be uncooperative. To me that was a red flag. They’re lawyered up.” Kevin Sheehan agreed. “They’re playing the we’ve-got-the-insurancecompany-with-deep-pockets-and-you-don’t card, basically. Which is wrong,” he said.
While the group of 16 are considering filing lawsuits against GSD and M&C Oilfield Services, there is hardly a guarantee they will recoup the damage to their properties. The river residents could pay significant out-of-pocket costs even if the barge and tugboat companies are found liable for the damage.
Any potential lawsuit also could be subjected to a nuance of maritime law called the limitation of liabilities, which states that if a vessel causes damage without the knowledge or direct involvement of its owners, they are not liable for anything more than the vessel’s post-incident value.
Even for runaway barges, there is precedent for limited liability. In 2011, a district judge in Louisiana ruled in favor of a company that owned a 200-foot barge that came unmoored during Hurricane Katrina, exonerating the company for massive damage that included destruction of several houses and a school bus.
“The owner of the barge may be able to escape liability altogether or limit his liabilities to the value of the barge itself,” said Thomas Fitzhugh, a maritime law expert and partner at Schouest, Bamdas, Soshea & BenMaier in Houston. “It’s been a feature of maritime law for a very long time.”
A letter issued by the Texas General Land Office after Harvey further complicates matters, as it orders any damaged coastal structure to be rebuilt by Jan. 10. The letter states that coastal residents can apply for an extension at a GLO field office.
In the meantime, the victims from the runaway barge find it difficult to even look at the river. The brackish water that once was a haven for summer relaxation is now a harsh reminder of Harvey’s residual impact.
“It’s too depressing,” said Shelly Stubbs. “We usually spend Christmas down here for the last nine years, and we decided this year I just can’t do it.”
Standing on the piles of sand caked on the bank from the flooding, Debi Boutell is still haunted by the shocking image of the barge weaving the river.
“I look at the river,” she said, “and it just makes me cry now.”