The Bay Area is the host with the most when it comes to salvaging a shipwreck.

Titan Maritime Engineering Director Phil Reed spent his first 40 days after the barges arrived in Coos Bay searching for resources.

He didn’t have to go far.

“We never been in a situation where so many local companies have exactly what we’ve needed,” Reed said.

Titan, the company charged by the state of Oregon to remove the New Carissa, tries to use businesses near its work sites as much as possible. Reed said with all that is available right here, Titan will drop about $4 million in Coos County.

His first stop was Sause Bros. Ocean Towing Co., where crews repaired and repainted the boom on Titan’s “Big Red” crane. President Dale Sause said his company was busy at the time the barges first got here. Sause Bros. couldn’t do a lot of work for Titan, but had no problem pointing Reed in the right directions. Sause referred him to welders, electricians and people who could sandblast and paint.

“We explained there were a lot of talented people in our area,” Sause said.

He tried to keep his referrals to companies in Oregon, and for the most part, Coos County.

“It’s been the funnest 40 days I’ve had on the project in a long time,” Reed said.

Having everything here added to that satisfaction.

As one connection led to another, Reed found himself a very busy man. His cell phone rang all day and he missed calls while on the line with other people. He said if a company he was working with couldn’t perform a job, it would find someone who could.

Knutson Towboat Co. was ready when Titan came to town. Operations manager Bryan Knutson said he contacted Titan about three months before the barges were sent, with an outline of services Knutson could provide.

“They needed heavy construction,” he said. “We do heavy construction.”

That heavy construction ended up being the tower Titan will use to run a cable car transporting crews from beach to barge. A five-person Knutson crew fabricated the giant steel structure, which will be set up on the beach site within the next few weeks. Knutson also subcontracted with Benny Hempstead Excavating for beach site preparation or the tower and to build the bypass road.

The salvage company’s local spending has helped area businesses.

“I hired a few people I wouldn’t have otherwise,” Knutson said. “It’s just work. It’s been a good thing.”

Knutson said he wasn’t sure how much any one business has benefited from Titan coming to town, but he thought collective amount of work is sure to help.

Titan has knocked on the doors of non-industrial businesses in its extended stay here, too.

While salvors are dealing with a mountain of rusting metal out in the surf, Jerry Wharton, the owner of Wardrobe Cleaners in Coos Bay, and his employees will confront a mountain of crew members’ laundry — more than 250 pounds per week. The pile is certain to grow as additional workers arrive.

Wardrobe Cleaners does commercial laundry, in addition to dry cleaning, so compared with what Wharton sees from other clients, what the Titan crew sends over is, well, clean — relatively speaking.

Logging company coveralls tend to be the worst, he said.

“Compared to that, it’s not too bad,” he said.

Business had fallen off a bit recently, so Wharton was happy to work with Titan.

“More dollars always helps,” he said with a smile.

Wharton may come to the rescue in more than one way. First by delivering clean clothes, and secondly, out on the beach in an emergency. As the chief of the Hauser Rural Fire Protection District, Wharton could be among the first responders making their way to the North Spit site in four-wheel-drive dunes emergency response vehicles.

With any luck, the efficiency of area rescue workers won’t have to be tested during Titan’s stay, but in the shipyards, the Bay Area’s expertise has been front and center.

Sause said the versatility of talent found in this area is a product of the shipping and logging history of the Coos Bay area. He thinks Titan has been pleased with the quality of the craft local companies offer.

Reed agreed.

“To me, it’s amazing,” Reed said. “On this one little strip we’ve found 99 percent of what we need.”