Digital Extra

I am local to the spill in R.I. and have appeared on some TV stations with regard to the crisis. My reputation in the industry is excellent and I provide engineering services to virtually every major operator and shipyard in the tug/barge industry. I have also worked for Eklof Marine.

Last week, I left two messages with the Journal, in an effort to have reporters contact me regarding the technical aspects of what the Journal was trying to cover. Neither was returned.

There are a number of errors in the reports I have read on this casualty, and very little if any attention has been given to all the innovations and efforts at improving safety and reliability that this industry has tried to implement on its own. For example, nowhere did I see it mentioned that Eklof was one of the first companies to enthusiastically embrace - and indeed purchase - double-hulled tank barges, and they did it years before they were required to. The list of missing facts and figures is something that is basically unfair to the people who make their living in this industry

The lead article in the Sunday paper refered to requirements for a "compass and chart", which was a poor and erroneous example to use. Those requirements are for an entirely different arm of the industry.

I myself am co-patentor of a system designed to allow a tug to push a barge at sea, in waves up to 40 feet. The system is in use on 6 tug/barge units considerably larger than the "North Cape"/"Scandia". Three more are being built. These systems render the manned/unmanned debate meaningless, yet there was no mention of it. As an aside, Eklof runs two tug/barge units with a French system that allows extended pushing as well. They are both double-hulled barges to boot. Both call on Providence.

Have you gone to see the bridge of a modern tug - one that readers might guess from what they read, to be lacking a compass and charts - and seen the array of electronics and navigation/communication equipment present there?

As a designer and facing the legal repercussions one must face in engineering if your work is substandard, I can tell you that this is NOT a fly-by night industry. Like every business in America - the media included - there are the very good and the very bad. That goes for tanker operators as well. This business is one that moves ahead and one with an excellent safety record. Compare the tens of millions of product moved along the East Coast each year to the number of spills, let alone major accidents.

It would be nice for someone to do a piece on what is RIGHT about what these people do. They risk their lives at sea - as do ALL mariners - to move these products to market. There is no law that could have compelled the men who were airlifted to the barge at the height of the storm to agree to go. They did it to free the anchor and they might have died doing it - exchanging their lives for the sealife it might have saved.

It's foolhardy for any person to look at an accident such as this and not to at least try to learn something from it. I certainly have. But the tenor of news reports that portray this industry to the layman as unregulated and primitive simply are incorrect. There was no mention of ABS or other classification society regulations, rules and inspections that virtually all tug/barge units must meet. There was no emphasis on the fact that the barges ARE in fact subject not only to stringent Coast Guard regulation and inspeaction, but that most of the major oil companies have their OWN inspection programs to be sure the equipment they charter to move oil is not deficient.

I wrote this letter because a friend - a layman - read the paper and asked me how I could ever allow myself to be associated with an industry that in his eyes (from the reports he was reading) was so poorly run and nearly criminal inits' disregard for safety. I don't want my friends knowing half a story and trusting that it is the whole story.

Sincerly,

Robert P. Hill

Ocean Tug & Barge Engineering

navarch1@ix.netcom.com