Times-Picayune December 15, 1996 Pages A1, A-24, A-24a by Petula Dvorak Staff writers Frank Donze, Chris Gray, Stephanie Grace, John Hall, Vicki Hyman, Glen Justice, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Mark Schleifstein, Stewart Yerton, Tara Young, and Joanna Weiss contributed to this report.A 69,000-ton freighter laden with soybeans lost power Saturday on the Mississippi River and plowed into the packed Riverwalk shopping mall, injuring scores of holiday shoppers and sending hundreds more into pandemonium as the ship cut a 160-foot swath through wharf, stores, and restaurants.
Rescue crews initially put the death toll at six, but backed off that figure as the night wore on and no bodies had been recovered or deaths confirmed. Several people were missing, officials said, and a makeshift morgue was set up at the scene as a precaution.
Triggering a catastrophe long feared by port officials, the 735-foot Bright Field lost power just after 2 p.m. as it headed downriver toward the Crescent City Connection. With its maritime emergency siren wailing, the vessel began to drift toward the Riverwalk Marketplace, crawling with an estimated 1,000 holiday shoppers and employees.
Two cruise ships, The Enchanted Isle and the Nieuw Amsterdam, with 1,700 passengers combined, as well as the Flamingo riverboat casino carrying 800 gamblers, were in the freighter's path as it bore down on the wharfside mall.
The Bright Field's pilot dropped two anchors and narrowly avoided the cruise ships along the wharf. But three minutes after the alarm began sounding, the freighter's port bow slammed into the Riverwalk near its western end, shearing off boutiques, shops and restaurants like an icebreaker.
Witnesses described a "terrifying" sound of grating concrete and shrieking metal as the Bright Field made contact. Fifteen shops and restaurants were all but eliminated as were portions of an adjacent garage and the waterfront rooms of the Riverside Wing of the Hilton Hotel, which towers over the Riverwalk.
"I was practically running alongside the ship inside the mall when I saw it plow through the cement like a tractor plowing through dirt," said Annette Angelle, a Breaux Bridge resident who was Christmas shopping.
"It just plowed through Cafe du Monde like there wasn't even a restaurant here," she said, referring to the Riverwalk branch of the popular coffee and beignet restaurant.
After destroying much of the pier in front of the Riverwalk, the Bright Field ricocheted toward the Flamingo, prompting at least a dozen panic-stricken gamblers to jump from the boat's upper decks on the stones of the Spanish Plaza.
"It hit the wharf and started veering off and it was like slow motion," said Richmond Davis, 33 of New Orleans, who was on board the casino boat's second deck as the freighter ground to a halt 70 feet from the Flamingo's stern.
"We only had six or seven seconds to sit there and wonder, 'Is it coming or not?' and then we had to jump," Davis said.
As Davis leaped from the Flamingo's second deck, a woman who had jumped from the top deck plunged past him and slammed onto the stones, he said.
The freighter's impact was powerful enough to knock two passengers from the deck of the Creole Queen, just downriver from the Flamingo, The two people were rescued from the river.
Harbor Police officers, hearing the freighter's alarms, raced on foot toward the mall.
"It was the first time I'd heard that sound for real, but it's very recognizable when they crank that sucker up," officer Mike Hoctel said.
Upon arrival, the officers said they found store employees unconscious under clumps of rubble and dazed shoppers wandering aimlessly. The shopping center's internal fire-fighting system went off, shooting geysers of water through the mall and turning its floors into a slippery, glass strewn surface. The stench of gas pervaded the wreckage as pipes broke apart.
Hoctel spotted a cook for leMoyne's Landing under crumpled slabs of concrete and smashed wooden chairs and carried him to safety.
"It was an unbelievable mess down there, with white powder drifting around like a massive explosion," Hoctel said.
Paramedics set up a triage center in a mall service entrance, slapping on neck braces and taping the injured to backboards as a minister darted about trying to console the hurt and shocked. At least 121 victims were rushed to downtown hospitals.
"How many do we have at Charity!" a paramedic screamed.
"Too many!" a colleague shouted back.
Touro Infirmary and Tulane University Medical Center also took the injured.
Police and firefighters flocked to the Riverwalk, and by 6 p.m. dogs were being used to sniff through the rubble for survivors. Officials offered a brave face to the public and emphasized there were no confirmed fatalities, but privately they told a different story.
"In my heart of hearts, I know there has to be people trapped in there and probably dead," one worker said.
Inside the wet, unstable remains of the Riverwalk, more than 100 rescue workers carefully picked away at the wreckage. Outside as news of the disaster filtered through the city, families and friends seeking word on the missing strained at police tape barricades around the Hilton Hotel.
"Our emphasis at this time is in ascertaining if there are people in the rubble," said Ron Brinson, president of the Port of New Orleans. "I want to emphasize that there are no confirmed reports of deaths."
Less than an hour after impact, Mayor Marc Morial, who was lunching nearby, arrived at the scene, The mayor surveyed the disaster from beneath the dented bow of the Bright Field.
"This is bad, this is really bad," said Morial, who expressed concern for victims and their families and praised the emergency response of the Coast Guard and New Orleans police and firefighters, the Harbor Police and other agencies.
With the holiday season to be followed by the Sugar and Super Bowls, Morial said he had no idea how the Riverwalk merchants could recover from this blow.
"This has been year of the Mac Frugal's fire, of rampant crime, of bankruptcies, and now this ..." Morial said as his voice trailed off.
Some rescue workers said they were concerned victims were trapped underwater, and Fire Superintendent Warren McDaniels said it could be two or three days before crews can comb the damaged wharf and buildings leaning over the Mississippi River.
"This is a painstaking operation because access is difficult from both sides," he said. "Visibility is a problem because several floors are collapsed, pancaked."
The ruins trailing the Bright Field's wake offered a sobering sight. Pillars of steel were bent into v--shapes, slabs of concrete dangled over the water, and, near One River Place, a high priced condominium tower, luxury cars from an underground parking garage were tilted precariously toward the river. The condominium tower was evacuated for lack of water service and 456 rooms in the Hilton's Riverside Wing were closed as a precaution.
A flotilla of tugboats motored alongside the Bright Field's massive hull, working to stabilize the vessel and prop up the damaged buildings, Brinson said the boat was not taking on water but that officials were concerned about it sinking. He said crews would partially unload the freighter before moving it.
"The ship is now aground at the bow area and this is a positive sign."Brinson said. "The engineers say the presence of the ship is contributing to the stability of a very unstable structure."
The accident's human toll remained unclear. A family of three, which several witnesses said was dining near the huge plate glass windows of the Cafe du Monde, remained unaccounted for, and rescue workers were fearful about the fate of children who had filled the mall.
Rumors began to fly among the anxious crowds surrounding the Rivergate. The Coast Guard had found a body floating downriver, two bodies had been found in the water near the freighter.
"Those are absolutely not true," Brinson said as reporters peppered him with questions about injuries and deaths. "I'm hopeful we'll find no fatalities."
Also uncertain late Saturday was what had set the Bright Field adrift. The freighter, which picked up its cargo in Reserve, was registered in Liberia, and had a Chinese crew. The cargo was destined for Japan, port officials said.
The Coast Guard was interviewing the pilot, Ted Davisson, and crew Saturday night and planned drug and alcohol tests, as is routine in such situations. No one would comment on possible charges stemming from the crash, and Brinson praised Davisson's last-ditch maneuvers to avert a worse disaster.
"There very clearly was a warning issued here, and that gave many people a chance and they fled," he said.
After the accident, traffic on the Mississippi was halted until 8 p.m., and then only partially opened so that boats maneuvered gingerly on the water.
This article included a large page 1 cover color photo of the accident, a color photo of a 10 year old girl with a broken foot leaving Charity Hospital, a color sketch of the Riverwalk area showing the impact of the Bright Field, an aerial black and white photo of the tugs pushing the Bright Field up against the wreckage with a companion black and white photo of the same area in October (before the accident), and a black and white sketch of the 2 story wharf and its stores overlaid with the area torn away in the crash. It also had a color photo of a triage area, a view of the ship at impact from the rear in B&W, and a pair of photos depicting the collapsed hotel and the tugs pushing the ship.
Times-Picayune December 15, 1996 Pages A-24a and A-26 by Chris Gray Staff writers Petula Dvorak, Joanna Weiss and Frank Donze contributed to this report.Inside the Riverwalk, Eve Catanese sounded the alarm.
The manager noticed the freighter from her store, Foot Traffic, when it was still in the middle of the Mississippi River.
When I saw it, it was 20 (sic) yards out there. I didn't think anything of it because it was way out."
Catanese went back to work taking care of customers during one of the busiest shopping days of the holiday season. When she looked out the window again, she saw the huge freighter heading straight for the store.
"The nose was coming right at it," she said. "It seemed like it was coming 50, 60 mph." She yelled for everyone to get out of the store.
Saleswoman Nicole Trufant thought Catanese was joking. "But she had a weird look on her face. The first thing I thought was that the building was going to collapse and I was going to be buried," Trufant left the register and took off for a nearby loading dock door. Panicking customers followed her.
No one was running until we started yelling," she said.
Holiday preparations ended in terror for hundreds Saturday, when the Bright Field freighter slammed into the Riverwalk mall in New Orleans, injuring shoppers and gamblers and severely damaging the riverfront businesses. Later people gathered at area hospitals, looking for family members and friends feared injured.
Catanese stayed in the store until it hit, pushing customers out the doors, "I kept turning around to look. I saw the big boat coming across the store."
On the Flamingo-Casino, passengers were panic-struck as they watched the freighter's giant black hull bearing down on them, said Sandy Aubert, a sports copy editor for the Times-Picayune who was on the Flamingo.
People were crying and screaming," Aubert said. A woman jumped from the third floor terrace to the dock and passengers stepped over a cocktail waitress who had fallen down without helping her up.
The ship missed the Flamingo, however. When it hit the wharf "it didn't really make that loud of a sound," Aubert said. "All you heard was like rocks crumbling. You could hear the wood being broken up as it hit the dock. As it hit the building, you could just hear crumbling."
Kristi Kohlman was in Foot Traffic with her mother, buying socks for a friends birthday, when the sales people started screaming.
"We heard the horns, it was constant horns," she said. "The barge was coming right at the store."
"The barge came in and the windows went out," Kohlman said. "There were lots of people running and screaming," Her mother slipped and hurt her ankle, but they got out safely.
At first, the horn blast annoyed Joan Dieckman, a tourist from Washington state, as she lunched on shrimp in the Riverwalk food court.
"We just kept sitting, eating, and we kept hearing that horn, but we didn't know what it meant." Dieckman said. "It was just like, what is that irritating noise?"
She said she realized something was wrong when people sitting closer to the window got up and started to come toward her. "The natural instinct was just to get up and run."
Elsewhere in the mall, Sheila Smith was Christmas shopping with her 9-year-old daughter when she heard a loud noise and began to run.
"People were falling and everything," she said. "You know how it is when you don't know why your running. you're just running."
The boat also came into Perfumania, where Natasha James was working. "The roof fell in," she said. "Light fixtures were falling down and everything."
"It felt just like an earthquake," Paulette Pajead said later at Charity Hospital. "It really just seemed like it was something that happened on TV."
On the Flamingo Casino, Michigan resident Mike Dunnuck was playing Caribbean stud when the first warning sounded.
"Nobody moved," he said. "Then they got back on the loud-speaker and said 'Get off the boat!' I thought it was a bomb or something like that." "When I got to the edge, I could see this big huge tanker crashing into Riverwalk. I started sprinting. People were running all over each other, trampling each other. Everyone was mild-mannered, until the boat crashed, then all hell broke loose.
"The people who were trying to stop and watch - they got knocked down. Without a shadow of a doubt it was one hell of a welcome to New Orleans>"
The crowd spilled onto the Hilton walkway, where Marshall Jones was leaving the casino.
"At first I thought the building was blowing up," he said. "Everything started shaking . Then everyone was hollering and screaming and running.
A steady stream of people flooded the city's hospitals, with injuries ranging from backaches and anxiety to fractured shoulders and broken legs. Nearly all the injuries came from the stampede of people who ran out of the mall after the ship hit.
But before going to the hospital, Catanese went back into the Riverwalk. The store was mostly gone. "There was this white dust everywhere," she said.
"It was unbelievable in there," a rescue worker said. "I've never seen anything like it. Rubble was everywhere."
New Orleans City Councilwoman Peggy Wilson rushed to the scene when she heard about the crash.
"From the river side (of the accident) it looks like two Pac Man mouths crunched off the side of the building," she said.
In the crush, many workers lost their purses and keys, anything kept in the back of the store. Inventory for Christmas and the expected Sugar Bowl crowd is gone.
"Our stuff was floating in the water," Truflant said. "The ceiling was collapsed and everything was floating. It looked like that movie, 'Airplane' when the plane goes into the airport.
This is all we have left of the store, four pairs of socks," she said, holding a plastic bag.
As the news of the accident filtered through the city, relatives of Riverwalk employees desperately checked hospitals for information.
"I've been frantic all afternoon," said Pearl Cantrelle, whose nephew, Ronald Edwards, 35, is a mall custodian. "I'm not sure if he's OK. We were sent to one location and then to another and no one can tell us anything.
Outside Charity Hospital, Sister Mary Rita put her arms around a sobbing parent who didn't know the whereabouts of her 6-year-old daughter who had spent the day with her grandmother.
"I haven't spoken to them since this morning," she said shuddering.
The Riverwalk was one of her daughter's favorite destinations. She knew they either had gone to the Riverwalk or to Mandeville; she just wasn't sure where.
Meanwhile some of the Foot Traffic employees went to University Hospital, where assistant manager was treated for minor injuries from her fall. Doctors checked Trufant for gas inhalation and Catanese was examined for injuries.
Still nauseous and dazed by the experience, Catanese believes the mall should have activated the alarm system once people noticed the barge was coming.
"Everything happened so fast. You are running and trying to get everybody out but you still don't believe it's happening."
For some members of a Lafayette children's choir, the day began with caroling at Canal Place and ended in an emergency room.
I was at the fudge store and everyone was screaming 'it's going to blow up, it's going to blowup!'" said Leigh Ann Ripka, 9, before she began crying at the memory of being trampled, "Everyone was running and I tried to run but I hurt my ankle," she said, straightening the ice pack on her foot.
All 52 of U.S.L. Children's Choir singers made it back to their meeting point outside the Riverwalk safety, one mother said.
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