With the U.S. Coast Guard’s recent release of the public Boating Accident Report Database (BARD) for 2011 we spent some time updating our list of boats striking dredge pipes in response to the recent Mark Barhanovich fatality.

Dredge pipe strikes are a rising concern with the Laass vs. Storm Lake case (death of David Paul McFarlin), the July 2011 fatality of a young girl in Trinity Bay (Texas), the high frequency at which accidents are reported by word of mouth in the region of dredging operations, and now the death of Mark Barhanovich (which has not yet been officially confirmed as a dredge pipe strike).

We also updated the list of houseboat propeller accidents we originally put together for our 2010 response to the U.S. Coast Guard’s rejection of the proposed USCG 10163 rule. In addition to adding the more recent accidents, SPIN sent us a USCG prepared list of 1983-1987 propeller accidents. We took some time to decode the old database entries, identified the houseboat propeller accidents and added them as well. We also identified some houseboat accidents in the 1983-1987 list USCG did not have identified as houseboats, and added them too.

If anybody is aware of any accidents that should be on either of these two lists that is not listed, please send them to us via the Contact Us tab on the top menu.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE

On November 15, 2012 we added three more dredge pipe strike accidents to the list (1986 FL accident in which the outboard flew into the boat and injured a passenger, 2006 FL injury accident in which dredge pipe was being towed to a new job site but was anchored in open water for the night, and a 2009 Corpus Christi Texas Commercial Ferry accident).