SAN LEON — Firefighters rescued three men Friday from barges set adrift as a cold front blew through the county with 40-mph wind gusts and heavy rains, officials said.
Today’s forecast included no expected rainfall, with a high temperature in the low 70s and lows in the middle 60s, Bill Toppin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in League City, said.
Temperatures should remain the same Sunday, which has a 40 percent chance of rain, he said.
At 12:15 p.m. Friday, San Leon volunteer firefighters rushed to Galveston Bay and helped two of the three men from the shallow water to land, Assistant Fire Chief Scott Lyons said. A third man later was rescued from a larger barge that drifted into deeper water. No injuries were reported, Lyons said.
“We had three barges break loose while they were doing pier work out in the bay,” Lyons said. “The weather caught them, and one person was trapped on each barge.”
Firefighters called the U.S. Coast Guard, but when a helicopter arrived the weather had subsided, and the third man used a crane on the barge to draw the vessel closer to land, Lyons said.
Firefighters then helped him through the shallow water to land, Lyons said.
The men were brought to shore at Third, Ninth and 18th streets, Lyons said.
Before the barges were secured, one ran through a pier and damaged another, Lyons said. The men were planting poles for a wood pier near 18th Street, he said.
The highest wind gust measured 40 mph shortly after 1 p.m. at Galveston’s Scholes International Airport, Toppin said.
A faulty weather sensor was unable to measure precipitation, Toppin said. As of 2 a.m. Friday, Galveston had 2.9 inches of rainfall for the month, but the island still was 11.48 inches shy of its yearly normal rainfall to date of 34.28, Toppin said.
