Fatal tugboat accident investigated
INDUSTRY – Authorities continue to investigate the sinking of a towboat on the Ohio River in Beaver County early Sunday that killed three people, including a West Brownsville man, and probably a fourth, a Greene County man. The 2:30 a.m. accident claimed the life of Edward Crevda, 22, of West Brownsville, Tom Fisher, 25, of Latrobe and Scott Stewart, 36, of Wheeling, W.Va.
And, Rick Conklin, 40, of Crucible, who was in the process of becoming a towboat pilot, is missing and presumed dead.
Three crewmembers – George “Toby” Zappone of Crucible, John Thomas and Jacob Wilds, no addresses listed – were rescued after the raging river swept the towboat, the Elizabeth M., backward over the Montgomery Island Lock and Dam, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. Campbell Transportation Co. Inc. of Charleroi owned the boat.
Coast Guard officials said the investigation into the accident could take several months.
The accident occurred as the Elizabeth M. was heading upriver out of the lock and dam, operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.
“As they were leaving the lock chamber, the current began turning the barges as they left the chamber, pushing them toward the dam. The towboat operator couldn’t maintain control and the towboat was pushed backward over the dam,” said Karen Auer, an Army Corps spokeswoman.
Conklin’s mother, Carol Ann Conklin, said she knows her eighth child probably drowned early Sunday, but she’s praying for a miracle.
“It doesn’t look good, but you still have to have hope,” Conklin told the Beaver County Times from her home Monday. “I’m praying that somehow he got out, and maybe he has memory loss or something. I know there isn’t much of a chance.”
Carol Ann Conklin said her son, born on Christmas Day 1964, was “the most wonderful boy on the face of the Earth.”
“Always so happy. The most loving person. He was always so special and so funny,” she said.
Rick Conklin, a U.S. Army veteran of Desert Storm, loved working on boats, his mother said. He was a crane man during his 12 years in the Army and worked around boats in the service.
After his discharge, he worked a series of jobs, and around 2000, with Zappone’s help, he landed a job working on riverboats with Campbell Transportation, she said.
Carol Ann Conklin said Zappone, her son-in-law, has more than 20 years’ service in the river trade and was one of the towboat’s pilots.
Zappone told his mother-in-law that he finished his shift at midnight and was sleeping when the tug went through the lock.
He was awakened by an emergency siren on the boat. When he jumped out of bed wearing shorts and a T-shirt, water was already streaming through the door. He grabbed a life vest and exited.
The force of the water slammed a door against the pinky finger of his right hand. He wouldn’t know that the finger had been amputated until he arrived at the hospital hours later.
“He said it all happened so fast that he could hardly remember anything,” Carol Ann Conklin said. “Toby thinks Ricky went to untie something, or get something, he didn’t know for sure, and they lost track of each other. All he knows is another guy grabbed him and hung onto him. He said his legs were hurting so bad and he had hypothermia. The guy held onto him for an hour before he was rescued.”
Zappone was visiting a surgeon Monday for treatment of his amputated finger, Conklin said.
Crevda was a 2000 graduate of Brownsville Area High School and was employed as a deck hand by Campbell Transportation. He is survived by his parents, Gary and Linda Crevda of West Brownsville; his brother, Gary Jr.; two sisters, Nikki and Nicole; his maternal grandmother, Norma Redman; and his girlfriend, Melissa Hiszanick.
The Army Corps’ Auer said that while the river level was elevated and the water was running two to three times more swiftly than normal, vessels were traveling on the river before the accident.
“The corps operates the locks on the river. There are times when, because of high water, we close operations of the locks. As for closing the river to navigation, that is up to the Coast Guard,” Auer said.
Auer said the river was at 12.9 feet at the time of the accident, and the Army Corps takes the locks out of operation when the river reaches the 20-foot level.
Lt. j.g. Justin Covert of the Coast Guard said a number of commercial vessels were on the river at the time of the accident, and while the river was high, it was navigable.
Three towboats – the Rocket, also a Campbell Transportation boat, the Lillian G., operated by Mon River Towing of Belle Vernon, and the Sandy Drake, operated by Crounse Corp. of Kentucky – had been downstream of the dam, and they immediately attempted rescue efforts.
Auer said it was unclear how many of the crewmembers of the Elizabeth M. were on the towboat and how many might have been on the barges. It is common practice for some of the crew to be on the barges when going through lock chambers, she said.
The Coast Guard has closed a 3½-mile stretch of the river, according to Covert.
“We closed down the river from mile 31.5 to 35 for safety reasons, because there are still three sunken barges. Campbell Transportation is trying to locate the three barges so they can be marked and we can reopen the river. The other three sank above the dam and are up against the dam and aren’t impeding navigation,” Covert said.
All six barges were loaded with coal at the time of the accident.
Editor’s note: Beaver County Times staff writers Bob Bauder, J.D. Prose and Stephanie Waite contributed to this report.