#ALGIERS LOCK QUEUE SKIN#

Landry said having that skilled labor unit in house and available was crucial to being able to tackle such a big repair job on such short notice. “They’re out here at night with lights, arcing away,” Adams said. At night, crews finish welding the new steel into place. During the daytime, welders cut out old steel and custom-fit new steel in place piece by piece. The crew of about 40 Corps employees has been working in two 12-hour shifts. Jesse Adams, left, and Vic Landry on top of the fan-shaped sector gate.

“I’ve got to tell you, they’ve done a great job,” Adams said. Jesse Adams, the engineer-in-charge overseeing the district’s in-house labor team, praised his team, which has been working around the clock, first cleaning the chamber itself, then cutting out damaged steel and welding new steel in place. All the weight sits on the pintle, and at the top is the hinge. “Sector gates versus miter gates are so much more robust,” Landry said. Vic Landry, operations project manager for the New Orleans District’s GIWW structures, said the fact that Algiers Lock has fan-shaped sector gates rather than barn-door-style miter gates was a real asset when the allision took place. Now, with the target reopening date of December 1 in sight, Corps officials say repairs have gone well, thanks to the district’s own skilled labor unit and to the river’s continued cooperation. Emergency repair work, dubbed the “Frankenstein patch”-coupled with drought conditions that kept the hole in the gate above the water line in both the Mississippi River and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW)-allowed New Orleans District officials to keep the lock open to navigation while they applied for $6.4 million to dewater the canal-end gate bay and make permanent repairs.

#ALGIERS LOCK QUEUE SKIN#

that day, the lead barge of a tow entering Algiers Lock from the Mississippi River allided with the canal-end sector gates, denting the north-side sector gate and knocking a 10-foot-wide hole in the south-side gate’s steel skin and also damaging that gate’s structural steel frame.Īfter initial assessments, lock managers from the New Orleans Engineer District determined there was no damage to the gate’s ability to swing open and close, and the lock reopened to navigation the same night as the allision. The initial images from Algiers Lock in New Orleans back in the summer, following a July 4 allision, certainly made an impression.

Algiers lock queue