GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Green Bay’s Public Works Department says the City Deck dock could be removed and inspected on Wednesday.
A Great Lakes cargo ship hit the dock and a fishing boat Sunday afternoon.
The massive freighter also appears to have damaged a maintenance walkway on the Ray Nitschke Bridge.
The shipping company that owns the ship says currents in the river may have played a role in the crash.
The U.S. Coast Guard is looking into the matter.
It is part of a season of changing conditions on the water, and the dangers that go with it.
When the 737-foot-long Kaye E. Barker damaged a boat, and part of the dock near Green Bay’s City Deck Sunday, Andrew Holzem says he had to see it himself.
“Ah, it was interesting. I really didn’t know how it happened,” said Andrew Holzem, South Bay Marina Harbor Master, CMO.
Holzem is an avid boater and the harbor master at the South Bay Marina.
“I don’t know if it was mechanical. I don’t know if it was current. I don’t know if it’s wind. I know he had heavy north wind that day, heavy current from the south, so it could have been a million things,” he said.
Port of Green Bay officials say navigating the Fox River downtown can be a challenge.
“The Main Street Bridge is oriented a little bit northeast, southwest. It’s not completely perpendicular to the river Then you add in high water. We’re four feet higher than we were just a couple years ago. So our water flows are are different, from a half-mile per hour, to one-and-a-half, to two-miles an hour, going north,” said Dean Haen, Port of Green Bay Director.
Haen says gusty winds didn’t help.
“You got wind-driven water, and you got flow, you know, river current. And I would speculate they encountered some unique currents there,” he said.
A wet spring, and now summer caused dangerous conditions for boats of all sizes around Northeast Wisconsin.
In June, two kayakers were rescued after their craft was caught in a cable stretched across the Fox River in Menasha.
And on the Fourth of July, three people were shaken up after this pontoon boat got stuck in the Neenah Dam, also on the Fox River.
“They get close and they get sucked into that current, and the boat can’t really in reverse, pull themselves out, or they can’t turn around, and so they’re stuck. Those are issues people really have to realize, how their boat is going to react,” said Christopher Groth, DNR Warden Supervisor.
Groth says the wet conditions have kept water temperatures down as well.
Boaters need to wear life jackets, so if they do go in the water, they have a better chance of being rescued.
