News Release
| Release Number: | 02-053 |
| Dated: | 3/20/2002 |
| Contact: | Public Affairs Office, 503-808-4510 |
Portland, Ore.-Sometimes problems come in sets, and that's happening this week at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' The Dalles Lock and Dam on the Columbia River.
When a computer software problem prevented the upstream gate from operating last weekend, the fallback option was a crane to place stoplogs into the lock. By using stoplogs to block flow, river traffic was delayed, but not stopped entirely. This morning the crane developed problems of its own. The stoplogs were inside the lock when the crane broke down, and the lock cannot be operated until the stoplogs are removed. While the Corps scrambles to find a floating crane that can get to The Dalles quickly, river traffic is temporarily blocked.
The crane has to be brought upriver from Portland, thus the lock will be closed until sometime tomorrow. Shippers and cruise line operators have been informed about the lock closure.
On the good news side of the house, those people working on the software issues believe the problems with it are solved. When the stoplogs are removed, Corps operators believe they will be able to operate the upstream gate the normal way, using a computer program designed to synchronize operations smoothly.