TROUBLED WATERS: COAST GUARD PREVENTS MORE BARGE ACCIDENTS

As the towboat Coal Express bumped the Illinois shore, the wind intensified, sending snow sailing horizontally across the Mississippi River.

Traveling north from Cape Girardeau, the tow cut through sheets of ice two inches thick. Near land, the ice sheets were compacted, thicker, snow-dusted wedges that broke loose, swarmed around the hull, then kicked outward in the propellor wash.

A four-man U.S. Coast Guard team used a ladder to climb from the bow of the towboat to the rocky shore. The men, in florescent Mustang cold weather coveralls, were to install warning markers over the icy bend in the river that had been the site of two accidents on Wednesday, accidents that sent seven runaway barges headed for Cape Girardeau's Mississippi River Bridge.

"That ice is miserable," said Seaman Apprentice Travis McReynolds. "We've got these gloves, you stick them in that water once, they're no good. You might as well go barehanded."

McReynolds, accompanied by Seaman Apprentice Bill O'Leary, Chief Petty Officer Tim Smith, and Warrant Officer Joe Baier, had been dispatched from the Coast Guard's Paducah, Ky., office. They spent the night in a Cape Girardeau motel, then hooked up with the Missouri Barge Line's Coal Express early Friday morning for the short trip up to river mile marker 53.8.

Baier moved toward the bluff face. He held the warning marker, a triangular florescent "dayboard," aloft so it could be seen by the towboat Floyd Goodman, which happened to be rounding the bend going south.

"How's that?" Baier, a 25-year veteran of the Coast Guard, said into his walkie-talkie.

Bruce Engert of Missouri Barge Line's Cape Girardeau fleet, in the pilothouse of the Coal Express, forwarded radio communiqus between the Floyd Goodman's captain and Baier's hand set.

"From what the Floyd Goodman said, I think that's real good," said Engert. "People will appreciate it."

The dayboards will serve as markers at which tow pilots can aim their bows as they round the bend. The land-mounted dayboards replace warning buoys washed away by the violent ice floe brought by this month's freezing, near-record temperatures. Normally, when facing downriver, black or green buoys mark the hazards to the right, and red buoys mark those to the left.

With proper locations established, the Coast Guard team nailed the markers to trees. Amidst gray forest, the florescent red warnings pointed the way to safety.

On Wednesday, sub-freezing weather and washed-away buoys contributed to two accidents at the bend. The first was at about 7:30 a.m., when five barges broke loose when ice caused a mechanical failure aboard the towboat Ruth D. Jones. Cape Girardeau police closed off the Mississippi River Bridge for 10 minutes, fearing one of the escaped coal barges would ram a bridge support.

The second accident, at about 2 p.m., occurred when the towboat Crimson Gem ran aground and five corn barges broke free. Two of these barges cleared the shallows at the bend and began downriver, again potentially threatening the bridge.

In both instances, Engert, piloting the towboat Joanne, helped to corral the fugitive barges. No injuries were reported from either incident.

Engert downplayed the rescues.

"When there isn't a person in danger, that cuts out half the worry," he said, eyeing the team on the bluff. "And the barges weren't close to a dock. ... We had plenty of time to get to them."

But such potential disasters are an unacceptable risk for industries involved in river traffic. A fully loaded 30-pack of barges can be hauling over $2 million worth of grain.

Once the weather breaks, Baier's men will face the daunting task of replacing the countless buoys lost to this month's Mississippi ice.

"Once the ice clears, we'll be running around like chickens with our heads cut off," said O'Leary.

The Coast Guard's Paducah office and its Nashville, Tenn., detachment are staffed by 24 full-time officers. These officers, alongside 50 part-time reservists and about 500 part-time auxiliary volunteers, manage 1,500 miles of waterway from Missouri's Bootheel to northern Alabama and across Tennessee. The Coast Guard responds to river spills, investigates commercial vessel accidents, licenses towboat operators, and inspects passenger vessels and all barges carrying hazardous material.

In increasing snow, the four-man team began carefully down the bluff, returning to the Coal Express.

"I bet you've never seen a 25-year veteran of the Coast Guard act as a human signpost before," Baier grinned.

Friday afternoon, a Coast Guard automatic radio broadcast began alerting tow pilots to the new dayboards at river mile marker 53.8.