No spill this time; lack of tugboat muscle suspected
Sylvie Paillard
[email protected]
For the second time in less than four months, an industrial shipping vessel has sustained severe damage after colliding with a berth at 樱桃视频Terminals.
"The ship had a hard landing," said Terminals president Ron Anderson.
Just after 10 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 9, the Star Ikebana - a Singapore-registered vessel scheduled to transport timber and pulp to Europe - collided into berth two while docking. The impact damaged the berth and caused a gash in the ship's double-hull that appeared "large enough to drive a car through," according to one witness. The gash measured 35-feet long by five-feet high, according to Coast Guard spokesperson Dan Bate.
Burrard Clean was at the scene soon after the accident and workers detected a strong odour of fuel, but in the darkness of night, were unable to assess whether fuel had been dumped into Howe Sound waters, said Bate. By early dawn, however, authorities on the scene announced that no visible sign of contamination had occurred.
"The captain was transferring fuel to other storage tanks so that may account for the smell, but no there was no leaking or no visible sign of fuel on the water, which is certainly the best situation to hope for," said Bate.
Luck may have played a large part in what officials are calling a relatively minor incident since the vessel's damage occurred above the waterline.
The Transportation Safety Board is looking into the accident, but senior marine investigator Raymond Mathew said it was such a minor incident that a report probably will not be issued. The board will make recommendations, however, one of which may include the addition of larger tugboats.
"We might send out a safety advisory, maybe in relation to the effectiveness of the tugs or the size of the tugs that they used, because that became apparent also in the last incident," said Mathew.
The last incident occurred Aug. 5 when the Westwood Anette crashed into the dock, dumping 29,500 litres of Bunker C fuel oil into the estuary. But circumstances of that accident also do not warrant a report, said Mathew.
"We're going to roll both of them [the accidents] into one," he said.
Despite the fortunate circumstances, last week's incident nonetheless reinforces the District of Squamish's desire to ensure that the Terminals' safety procedures and equipment are in place, said Mayor Ian Sutherland.
"Fortunately we didn't [have contamination] for this one," said Sutherland. "But I think it points out the fact that we have to make sure that we have all the safety procedures and all the clean up procedures in place in case it does happen again."
Anderson said that the operation is in complete compliance with regulatory authorities' rules.
"If somebody has some ideas over and above what they're looking for then they'll have to go to the authorities that control us," he said.
Anderson added that Terminals workers were just as frustrated as the community over the incident.
"It's very unusual and very unfortunate for these things to happen, you know, where you have something that is newsworthy so quickly after being here for something over 30 years and not having any incidents at all," he said.
"My hope is that this is absolutely the last one that we'll see here."
Berth two returned to full operations immediately following a Transport Canada inspection.
The Ikebana's owners are having the ship's tanks cleaned out before moving it to Vancouver for repairs when weather permits.
Transport Canada will then inspect the ship to ensure seaworthiness, according to spokesperson Rod Nelson.
