(NEW ORLEANS) – Container vessel operations resumed Tuesday at the Port of New Orleans, just nine days after Hurricane Ida made landfall in southeast Louisiana as a Category 4 storm. The first two ships worked the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal, with MSC Charleston at New Orleans Terminal and CSL Manhattan at Ports America. SEACOR’s container-on-barge service was scheduled to be worked Tuesday night by Ports America.
“The Port of New Orleans and New Orleans Public Belt (NOPB) Railroad are resilient and strong. Our wharves are busy today, handling both container and break-bulk cargo vessels, and trains are moving,” said Brandy Christian, president and CEO of Port NOLA and CEO of NOPB. “Our success can be attributed to coordination with a long list of partners: FEMA, MarAd, our local, state and federal leaders, terminal operators, tenants, International Longshoremen’s Association, river pilots, Entergy, Carnival Cruise Line, our dedicated port and NOPB teams, and others.”
Port NOLA’s break-bulk vessel operations resumed Sept. 2, just four days after Hurricane Ida, with M/V Ishizuchi Star working at Coastal Cargo. NOPB operations also resumed Sept. 2 to connect with BNSF Railway, CN, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Souther, and Union Pacific. Navigation on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway east of the Mississippi River through the Inner Harbor Canal Lock has also resumed.
Though Ida’s fierce winds caused mass power outages throughout the region and shut down operations, the port’s terminals and industrial real-estate properties sustained no major damage due to their location within the $14 billion federal Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System. Port NOLA’s Louisiana International Terminal development is also located within those boundaries; that property was not materially impacted by the storm.
— Port of New Orleans
