Vietnamese cargo ship tilts at Vizag port, crew escapes
A Vietnamese merchant vessel tilted towards one side at the Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam city allegedly because of the negligence of the crew members as they were loading it with iron billets on Wednesday evening.
There were 17 crew members on board the 11,000-tonne MV Hai Duong 09 when it started tilting and settled down after touching the deck at EQ berth 5.
Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) chairperson MT Krishna Babu told reporters there were no injuries or causalities in the incident and efforts were on to remove the cargo that was loaded to enable the ship to stabilise on its own.
Jaya Dev, a VPT traffic manager, said the cargo ship was berthed in the harbour for loading of the iron billets of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL). JM Baxi Company, the stevedore of the ship, was charted to export the billets. About 1,200 MT had been loaded when the vessel tilted, with the weight shifting to one side.
Dev said restoration work has been already initiated.
Port sources said operators should maintain the balance of the ship and load the cargo in a phased manner.
However, the crane operator wrongly loaded the blooms one side of the ship and unable to balance the load, the ship tilted towards the berth.
“Had the ship tilted towards the waters, the entire ship would have sunk,” sources added.