An explosion and fire at a Staten Island oil storage facility last Friday sent thousands of gallons of gasoline spewing into the nearby waters, backed up traffic for hours and shook nearby homes. Two people were killed and one seriously injured when a barge - owned by Hicksville-based Bouchard Transportation Company, exploded while unloading gasoline at approximately 10 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 21. At press time, an investigation into the cause of the explosion was still ongoing.

The explosion occurred on the southwestern tip of Staten Island at Port Mobile - the nation's largest fuel-transfer station, and involved Bouchard's B-125 barge. In a media statement issued on Saturday, Feb. 22 to PR Newswire, Morton S. Bouchard III, president and CEO of the company, stated "Bouchard Transportation Co., Inc. is cooperating fully with the Coast Guard, the NYPD and the NYFD in determining the source of this tragic accident. Investigators say they have not ruled out any possibilities as to the cause of this accident."

Currently owned by Exxon-Mobile Corp, Port Mobile was first built in 1934. Today, it is the largest petroleum transfer facility in the United States for the distribution of gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and jet fuel by barge. According to officials, B-125, which was first built in 1975, was 340 feet long, 74 feet wide and 30 feet deep with a 118,000-barrel capacity. One of 31 barges owned by Bouchard, the B-125 held some 60,000 barrels of gasoline at the time of the explosion.

According to published reports, last week's explosion was not the first incident involving the family-owned Hicksville company. Over the past decade, Bouchard has been involved in a string of incidents, the most recent occurring last March when a vessel leaked some 2,000 gallons of heating oil in the East River, spanning a distance from Astoria to the Throgs Neck Bridge. Bouchard paid $1.3 million to clean it up and a $75,000 civil penalty while the captain, who was found guilty of being drunk at the time of the incident, was sentenced to probation and a $15,000 fine.

Additional incidents included a 1993 accident when a Bouchard barge collided with two other vessels in Tampa Bay sending 300,000 gallons of gasoline into the water. Three years later, a Bouchard-owned barge touched bottom in Boston Harbor while another spilled gasoline in the Hudson River and a third leaked 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the Long Island Sound. In 1999, 4,000 gallons of oil spewed onto the Delaware River and exploded while another incident occurred on the Hudson River.

"Bouchard Transportation Co., Inc., the largest family-owned ocean-going barge company in the world, exceeds industry standards in safety by voluntarily implementing an International Safety Management Code compliance plan - one of very few barge companies to do so," stated Bouchard.

He added, "The B-125 had recently undergone more than $500,000 worth of shipyard renovation. B-125 also passed a routine periodic dry dock examination as required by the [US] Coast Guard and American Bureau of Shipping in October [2002]. Bouchard strives to become the most environmentally safe ocean-going barge company in the US."

Although definite conclusions have yet to be determined, officials believe the environmental impact of the explosion to be minimal.