![]() Then, just a few weeks later, Hurricane Rita blew in and forced the same track back into the trees, Ledet says. The track was rebuilt and returned to service in about a week. Balfour workers installed ties, completed rail joints and performed other basic trackwork. Other contractors working at the site alongside Balfour crews moved the track, cutting it in sections. "There was a railroad mainline that was 80 feet from where it was prior to the storm," says Ledet, adding that if the willow trees hadn't trapped the track, it would have washed farther away. The force of the floodwater created an amazing sight: Six miles of track - largely intact - were forced upward into a line of nearby willow trees. The work "was right in the middle of a huge disaster we still hear about seven years later," notes Robbie Ledet, Balfour Beatty Rail's operations manager in Thibodaux, La. was part of a team that responded to help CN repair six miles of track bordering Lake Pontchartrain in southeastern Louisiana that was washed out by floodwater. The storm surge caused a breach in the levee system in New Orleans, flooding the city and coastal areas.īalfour Beatty Rail Inc. One of the most memorable natural disasters for at least two contractors was Hurricane Katrina, which caused massive flooding and destruction along the Gulf Coast in August 2005. ![]() The challenges contractors have overcome the past several years ranged from finding a way to access the site, to housing and feeding workers on a job, to keeping lines of communication open when phone service is unavailable. ![]() They also are needed to repair derailed rail cars and get them back on track. Railroads call on contractors to rebuild track washed away during a flood or clear downed trees and other debris from lines. From the destruction of the tornado that hit Joplin, Mo., in 2011, to the widespread devastation Hurricane Katrina wrought on the Gulf Coast in 2005, natural disasters can pose new challenges to the contractors that help railroads recover from those devastating events. ![]()
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