A combination of heavy snow, ice and strong winds during a negative four foot tide sank the harbor ramp.
A heavy snow load, ice buildup, strong wind and an especially low tide combined to sink the harbor ramp during the night of Jan. 4, severing the dock from the shore.
Several residents lent their hands and gear for several hours the next day to save the ramp.
“The gangway, during low tide, came off the guide tracks at the bottom of the ramp, allowing the gangway to get wedged behind these steel tracks. Once this happened, the gangway got pinned in place and was unable to slide forward during the incoming tide,” harbormaster Shawn Bell wrote in an email to the CVN. “As the water rose, the supporting float began to sink and buckle under the pressure. This led to severe damage of the supporting gangway float and it was only getting worse with every tide cycle.”
Bell said a fix had to be made quickly to prevent further damage and maintain power to the harbor. Borough staff first tried using an excavator to lift the ramp out of the water, but the machine couldn’t get close enough to the gangway due to mud.
“At this point, there were several guys from the harbor that wanted to give support and find an alternate way to free-up the gangway. Without their help, I don’t believe we could have gotten the gangway free and operational that night. They grabbed their own jacks, ropes, chains, come-alongs, and went to work. Brent Crowe, Ira Henry, Stuart Dewitt, and Derek Poinsette all stayed late into the night to help,” Bell wrote.
Henry said he went down to the harbor in his pajamas around 9 p.m on Jan. 5 to watch the excavator. After seeing that attempt fail, he went home to grab a car jack. With their own equipment, Henry and the other volunteers successfully unpinned the gangway. They laid 4x12s as temporary tracks, freeing the ramp to slide up and down with the tide.
In subsequent days, the borough contracted Chilkat Custom Contractors to stabilize the gangway float enough to keep the ramp functional through winter.
Henry said the harbor’s infrastructure should be able to withstand snow, ice, wind and low tides, all expected forms of weather in Haines, and he questioned whether a design or maintenance issue contributed to its failure.
Brandon Ivanowicz, an engineer at PND Engineers, which designed the gangway, said the float and ramp failed due to a combination of extreme weather forces-a heavy wet snow load, a very low tide and powerful winds. He pushed back on the notion that the guide tracks were too short to account for the tide and weather. “They’ve been long enough for the last 15 years. It was just this combination of these extreme events,” Ivanowicz said.
Bell said the float will need to be replaced and additional repairs will be necessary later this year.
Borough manager Annette Kreitzer said staff are working to identify funding for the replacement float. “It’s going to cost some big money to fix this,” she said.