A salvage team on Tuesday fished for a 112-foot barge that capsized and sank to the bottom of the San Francisco Bay back in April.
As of 10:30 a.m., what Coast Guard officials described as the "crane house" of the barge Vengeance had been raised and placed on another barge to be transported, Chief Warrant Officer Jeremiah Winston said.
Work began overnight just south of the Bay Bridge and east of Yerba Buena Island at the site of the 112-foot Vengeance, which sank on April 7.
The freight barge has been sliced into two pieces, and crews ultimately will utilize a crane to hoist both sections out of the water just south of the Bay Bridge.
Two more pieces of the barge remain in the bay. Part of one of those pieces is sitting on 25 feet of mud on top of the Transbay Tube that BART trains use to travel in between San Francisco and Oakland.
The two pieces of the barge should be out of the water by the end of the week, Winston said.
The sinking initially triggered fuel to spew from the barge. A leaking fuel vent was plugged days after the barge went down, and excess fuel — roughly 2,700 gallons worth of petroleum-based products — has since been removed from the vessel.
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The barge has a crane and is under contract with BART. It was positioned near an underwater rail tunnel that carries BART's commuter lines between San Francisco and Oakland. The barge is used by divers who do underwater anti-corrosion work on the Transbay Tube.
BART's tube was not damaged by the barge.
The U.S. Coast Guard, California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response, San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, Vortex Marine Construction and BART are involved in the removal effort.
The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.
