2021 is really, really turning out to be a bad year for container ships. After the infamous Ever Given incident and the fire off the coast of Sri Lanka, a container ship collided with another ship while docking at the Port of Kaohsiung in Taiwan. This resulted in a chain reaction that caused a huge crane to tip over and badly damaged another one.
According to a Taiwanese news outlet, the ships in question were the DURBAN, a 316-meter-long, 86,679 gross tonnage container ship operated by OOCL Shipping Company that was docking into the port, and the 32,720 gross tonnage CONSTANCY operated by Yangming Shipping. The CONSTANCY got sideswiped by the DURBAN during the accident.
The chain reaction that then ensued caused container crane number GC8 to collapse onto GC6, and then slam into a stack of containers and collapse that as well. Workers scrambled to get out of the way of the massive falling pieces of metal, with reports saying that one worker was slightly injured in the chaos and another 2 were trapped in the cranes.
Harrowing footage has emerged of the incident showing the enormous amount of damage caused and the workers trying to get out of the way. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt.
Another video shows the ship collision that caused the crane to collapse in the first place. Let’s hope this is the last we hear of huge container ships going through unfortunate circumstances this year, since the potential for damage is always even bigger.
