Boat docks in the path of winter storm Fern have been damaged under the weight of frozen precipitation, submerging boats and leaving costly cleanup and salvage.
There have been published reports of dock collapses from Lake Texoma to Kentucky Lake in Tennessee, and stressed structures could still crumble.
In Arkansas, there are dramatic videos of docks collapsing on Lake Hamilton and at Lindsey’s Resort on the Red River. (See links below.) At the Little Rock Yacht Club, six people had to be rescued when the dock roof came down on their boats.
Reports out of Pottsboro, Texas, say several marinas on Lake Texoma have sustained substantial damage.
“Our boats were tied to a dock that’s sinking; it’s a little unnerving,” Casey Alexander told the NBC affiliate there. “We’ve had snow and ice a little bit every year, but this is the first year I’ve ever seen this happen.”
Elite Series pro Matt Robertson lives in Kuttawa, Ky., on Kentucky Lake. As he prepares for next week’s season opener on Lake Guntersville, he learned several marinas on the south end of the lake in Tennessee suffered damage. He said Birdsong Marina, Mason’s Boat Dock, and Beaver Dam Resort all had a dock sections sinking or collapsed.
“We got about 8 inches at home and I think they got a half inch ice or so and a pretty good amount of snow in Tennessee,” he said. “My buddy said the marinas are just devastated. The roof collapsed on one and then on another, the slips actually sank.
“I’m actually kind of shocked because we get snow and ice all the time, but this was crazy.”
Lakes in Central Arkansas were affected after the storm dumped sleet and snow, weighing down a number of docks. The extent of the damage remains uncertain, but local resident Philip Kastner marveled at the extensive destruction after his brief survey.
Kastner, owner of Knollwood Lodge on Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, Ark., took out his pontoon boat for about an hour, careful not to make a wake to cause further damage. He saw a wide swath of devastation.
See video of dock collapsing on Arkansas’ Lake Hamilton.
“If it is an older structure, it is struggling,” he said, “and there are boats underneath most of them. And more than several actually collapsed. I’m talking about 30, 40 boats underneath water in just one alone.
“And it’s not just Lake Hamilton, Crystal Springs on Ouachita, Swaha on Lake Greeson, De Gray Lake. I don’t know a lake that doesn’t have old boat stalls on it in some place, and if it does, then it’s underwater.”
Kastner, who works at Trader Bill’s boat dealership, said his dock, with stilts down to the lake bottom, is holding up.
“The docks that are collapsing for the most part are the ones that are on flotation,” he said. “They were never designed to support that much weight. They were designed to support a tin roof, which weighs next to nothing, and a maybe 3,000-pound boat.
“When you stick 10,000 pounds of ice on top of it, it was never designed to hold that much weight, especially the older ones.”
Kastner said he sees a hard, long, expensive road ahead. While high temperatures in the upper 40s helped melt a little bit, it refroze overnight, so salvage won’t come for some time.
“First of all, you’re going to have to wait until this all melts so they can get all that weight off of them,” he said. “Then, usually, it’s a matter of, bit by bit, removing enough of the dock so that you can get the boat out from underneath it, or if it’s sunk, you’ve got remove the dock so you can float it.
“This easily could be going on for a year or more. This is not a quick fix. This is a long process.”
Hot Springs City Manager Bill Burrough told Little Rock’s THV11 that this is the worst storm he’s encountered.
“I don’t remember an event quite like this that we’ve had sleet, freezing rain, freezing snow,” he told the CBS affiliate. “Nothing where we’ve had this much accumulation with a storm that came in two waves.”
Robertson forwarded photos of damaged marinas, saying it reminded him of a tornado that hit the region in 2019.
“The only thing I saw close to it is when tornadoes came through Moors,” Robertson said. “There’s still parts of the dock in the water you can see on side scanner. It probably took two years for them to rebuild that.
“This was a catastrophic event nobody saw coming. You can pretty much just total out what’s over there.”
Officials advise boat owners that unstable docks are dangerous and to not try to access or salvage until the ice melts.
A similar snow incident occurred a year ago in Lenoir City, Tenn., in the boundaries for this year’s Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour. Elite pro Robert Gee, who lives in the host city of Knoxville, related a connection.
“You remember that dock where Ott DeFoe caught the big one in 2019 to win the Classic?” he asked. “That dock is totally gone. It’s not there anymore.”
