”It could have been just another routine shift for three longshoremen on the Longview port docks,” reports The Daily News. ”Yet their presence on a cold New Year’s Eve morning helped prevent a tragedy.” Photo by The Daily News.
Millwright Kelly Palmer, 48, of Toutle said he was waiting in a truck with an alternate millwright Laik Kell, 36, of Castle Rock. They were preparing to check a choke feeder, a machine that was loading soda ash onto the 800-foot long “Sadlers Wells,” a freighter tied up at Berth 2.
At about 11 a.m., they saw crew members frantically running on deck, looking over the side and hollering.
They were joined by another millwright, Mikel Ford, 37, of Rainier. The three headed for a series of walkways that cross between the wooden pilings that support the dock. It was high tide, shortly after the December storms, and the frigid, murky water under the docks was filled with debris. The massive bulk of the “Sadlers Wells” formed a wall between the river and the dock’s underside, darkening an already dim space.
“At first we didn’t see anything but a hard hat laying on top of the driftwood,” Palmer said.