Towboat Accident Kills 1 in Kanawha River
Charleston Gazette
19 April 2010
By Veronica Nett, Staff Writer
Divers with the St. Albans Fire Department Water
Rescue work to recover the body of a man from the wheelhouse of a
towboat that sank early Monday morning in the Kanawha River near
Bancroft downriver from the John Amos Power Plant. - Chris Dorst
WINFIELD, W.Va. -- A water rescue crew pulled the body of a
Kentucky man from the Kanawha River Monday afternoon, after he drowned
in a towboat that sank early that morning.
The man was identified Monday evening as Greg Smith of Catlettsburg, Ky.
Rescue crews pulled Smith from the river around 12:15 p.m., after the
towboat went down near Winfield in Putnam County around 2 a.m.
Smith was part of a two-man crew on a 67-foot towing vessel, named the Misty
Dawn, owned by Ross Brothers Construction of Ashland, Ky. The
towboat had been pushing a barge carrying a crane on the Kanawha River
toward Charleston.
The barge began taking on water about 6 p.m. Sunday, said Lt. Cmdr.
Eric Denley of the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit in Huntington.
The Misty Dawn pushed the barge toward the shore where it sank near
mile mark 37, near Vossloh Track Material Inc. in Poca.
About eight hours later the towboat sunk near the center of the river,
a few hundred yards from the sunken barge, Denley said.
The other crewmember, Christopher Morris, was able to jump overboard
and swim to shore. He was taken to Thomas Memorial Hospital in South
Charleston.
Smith's body was recovered from the wheelhouse of the towboat, Denley
said.
The Coast Guard is treating the barge and towboat sinking as two
separate incidents that are not related, he said.