A fishing boat accident that killed two men Saturday marked the second time in a year that a Chattanooga company’s barges were involved in a fatality.
Federal court documents show that barges owned by Serodino Inc. of Chattanooga ran over an anchored boat carrying three fishermen on Watts Bar Lake in Loudon County, Tenn., on June 26, 2009.
The accident happened about 2:30 a.m. as the men slept inside a boat anchored within the lake’s navigation channel. The collision’s force threw the men from the boat, and Jones Bower Bare, 53, of Trap Hill, N.C., died from injuries, documents show.
A Serodino tugboat called the Bearcat was pushing the barges in the Watts Bar collision – the same boat that was moving a nine-barge load that slammed Saturday into a fishing boat occupied by three fishermen on the Tennessee River, according to documents.
Soddy-Daisy native Richard Wilkey, 52, and Tim Spidle, 45, of Elizabethton, Tenn., died in the collision. David “Christopher” Wilkey, 37, survived the crash and told investigators that the men didn’t see the barges until they were 100 yards away.