WASHINGTON: The Savannah River channel reopened for commercial traffic Wednesday morning with 11 vessels transiting the channel by mid-afternoon, nine of which were being worked at Garden City Terminal and two at Ocean Terminal. By the end of the day, Garden City Terminal was working nine vessels, moving nearly 800 containers per hour, with an anticipated 7,800 container moves for the day.
“Georgia’s ports are now fully operational, which is a testament to the efforts of countless individuals to ensure our port customers experienced minimal impact,” said Griff Lynch, executive director for the Georgia Ports Authority. We would like to thank our many service providers, port stakeholders, first responders, GPA employees and Governor Nathan Deal’s Office for working around the clock to bring the ports of Brunswick and Savannah back online so quickly.”
Of all the ports affected by Hurricane Matthew, the Port of Savannah was hit the hardest, according to U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Amy Beach, commander of Marine Safety Unit Savannah and Captain of the Port. Because the full force of the storm struck Savannah’s outer harbor, aids to navigation were severely compromised, Beach said, adding that fully reopening the port was her top priority.” Lynch thanked Beach and Coast Guard Rear Admiral Scott Buschman for “personally interceding to expedite the repairs necessary to restore this channel.”
Dockside, hundreds of GPA employees were on terminals in both Brunswick and Savannah the day after the storm restoring power, working with emergency responders and testing systems to ensure the safe return of thousands of port users. The gates at Garden City Terminal were projected to process more than 8,500 truck moves Wednesday and that number is expected to grow throughout this week and into next week.
Lynch encouraged the local trucking community to take advantage of this Saturday’s regularly scheduled gate hours. “During peak season, we understand this is a critical time for port users’ supply chain in the U.S. Southeast and Midwest,” he said. “Everyone involved did a phenomenal job bringing the port back to normal operations.”
As the largest single-terminal container facility in the nation, with more than 9,700 feet of contiguous berthing space and 22 ship-to-shore cranes, Savannah was able to quickly recover from the storm with minimal impact to the supply chain. “Hurricane Matthew demonstrated the ability of our team to rise to the occasion and the incredible resiliency of our ports to efficiently handle large volumes in difficult circumstances,” Lynch said.
