Casualties

Summer accidents reported on the seas and rivers

By Fred McCague

June

June 20 – The 781-ft. Maltese containership India Lotus , with 32 people on board, reported an engine control room fire 700 miles south of Dutch Harbor while en route from Yokohama to Panama. The crew extinguished the fire, but the ship was left dead in the water. The ship was later towed to Vancouver, arriving July 14, and it remains alongside Vancouver Drydock, needing a full rebuild of the control room.

June 21 – The ferry Princess of the Stars sailed from Manila into the face of Typhoon Fengshen (Frank) with 865 passengers and crew on board. On June 21, at the height of the storm, off Subuyan Island, Philippines, the ship capsized with just 32 survivors. About 160 bodies have been recovered at time of writing. Compounding salvage efforts is a 40-ft. container of highly toxic pesticide on board. The ship remains aground and upside down. The Philippine government plans to refloat the vessel and recover bodies in September.

June 27 – The 186-ft. sternwheeler Portland, with 97 people on board, lost power and ran aground 1.5 miles east of the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. The tug Invader took the vessel into tow to the Columbia Gorge sternwheeler dock in Cascade Locks, Ore. There was no hull or structural damage.

July

July 11 – The 653-ft. car carrier Amity Ace ran aground on the Brunswick River, Ga. She was refloated at high tide with the assistance of two tugs.

July 12 – The F/V Tara Gaila , responding to a Coast Guard request for assistance, picked up 10 people including three children from Fort Glenn cattle ranch, six miles from Alaska’s 3,500-ft. Okmok Caldera on Umnak Island, after the volcano erupted with a large plume of ash. The fishing vessel took them to Dutch Harbor, about 65 miles away.

July 21 – A crew member on board the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Des Groseillers badly injured his left hand while cutting a plank using a bench saw while the ship was sailing in Davis Strait in the Canadian Arctic. He was later transferred to a hospital.

July 23 – More than 419,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil was spilled when the chemical tank ship Tintomara collided with and cut in two an American Commercial Lines barge that was being pushed by the Mel Oliver on the lower Mississippi River, causing an extended closure of the river.

August

August 3 – A Pacific Coastal Airlines Grumman Goose chartered by Seaspan International Ltd. crashed 10 minutes after take-off from Port Hardy, B.C. It had been bound for log-loading operations at Chamiss Bay. Four Seaspan employees perished in the crash, along with the pilot of the airplane. Two Seaspan log loaders survived, one with minor injuries and the other with a broken pelvis.

August 13 – A severe thunderstorm with high winds hit Jacksonville’s Blount Island Marine Terminal and pushed a parked container crane several hundred feet along the rails to crash into a row of four other parked cranes. Two container cranes collapsed and three others were damaged. The port later awarded a $1.6 million contract to Rigging International of Alameda, Calif., to remove the two cranes destroyed in the incident and repair the other three.

August 23 – Delmont Blakeney, a longshore walking boss, died after being hit by a container and knocked into the water off the deck of the Panamanian containership NYK Starlight at the Port of Oakland.

A majority of the information presented was collected from the U.S. Coast Guard and Transportation Safety Board of Canada.