A month after it capsized and sank in a storm, a 112-foot construction barge named Vengeance remains in the muck at the bottom of San Francisco Bay, resting "very near" where BART's Transbay Tube runs underneath. The barge flipped over and sank just after midnight on April 7 in the same windy storm that toppled a big-rig truck on the Bay Bridge and knocked out the power in over 100,000 Bay Area homes. We learned a few days later that the barge had come rest on top of the Tube which, somewhat ironically, the barge was there performing maintenance on, under contract to BART but that the 20 to 30 feet of soil on top of the Tube itself had protected it, and it was not at all impacted by the incident.
Curbed reports on the progress of salvaging the Vengeance, speaking to a Coast Guard spokesperson who says, "The final procedure is still in the works," meaning the actual towing of the barge out of the water. First, it had to be flipped right-side up, and getting it back to the surface and towed away will take another week or two.
The barge had been doing work to help prevent corrosion on the Transbay Tube, and now the Coast Guard explains there is another, similar crane-equipped barge out where the Vengeance sank, which is assisting with the salvage process. It's called the Mare Island, and it's pictured above.
BART spokesperson Alicia Trost further assures Curbed that the Tube was "designed for such things" and is not damaged.
Previously: Sunken Barge In Bay Is Resting Atop Transbay Tube