Tugboat towing barge runs aground off B.C. coast

A B.C. mariner said he feared for his life when the tugboat he was on ran aground off B.C.’s north coast Tuesday night with a loaded barge in tow.

Irvin Joseph, 33, was working on the Cadal, a tugboat owned by Wainwright Marine, when it slid onto the beach at Rix Island in the Gardner Canal near Kitimat. The captain, who was on a meal break and had given the wheel to another deckhand, quickly took control of the tug and reversed it off the beach as the barge continued to travel toward the shore.

“I think if that barge had hit us, we would have been finished,” Joseph told Postmedia Friday.

The incident happened near the place where another tugboat, the Ingenika, sank in February, killing two men. The close call has renewed calls to improve safety in B.C.’s tugboat industry.

In the aftermath, the crew scrambled to ensure the tug wasn’t taking on water before continuing on to Kemano, the site of a multi-year Rio Tinto tunnel project, arriving at about midnight. The following morning Joseph woke up with severe neck pain that eventually sent him to the emergency room.

Both WorkSafeBC and the Transportation Safety Board confirmed they are assessing an incident involving a tugboat in the Kitimat area on Nov. 2, but would not provide further details. Postmedia reached out to Wainwright Marine for a comment, but did not hear back before deadline.

For some in B.C.’s tugboat industry, the close call is eerily familiar. In February, captain Troy Pearson and deckhand Charley Cragg died when the Ingenika, another Wainwright tugboat, sank in the same area. A third man, 19-year-old Zac Dolan, was rescued after he made it to shore.