MANSHIET RUGOLA, Egypt – The container ship that blocked world trade by blocking the Suez Canal has been working tow tow on Umm Gaffar’s dusty brick building for five days now, which has echoed its mechanical and mechanical humility.
She looked up from where she was sitting in the muddy alley and wondered what this ship, ever given, was carrying in all those containers. Flat screen TV? Full size refrigerator, washing machine or ceiling fans? She or her neighbors were not in the village of Manshit Rugola, with a population of 10,000.
“Why don’t they pull a container out of it?” Umm Ghaffar, 65, joked, “There could be something better. Maybe he can feed the town. “
The Japanese-owned Evergreen and more than 30,000 cargo ships are now waiting to pass through the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most complex shipping arteries, often supplying psychiatric rugola.
Hulling cars, oil, livestock, laptops, jet fuel, scrap metal, grain, sweaters, sneakers, appliances, toilet paper, toys, medical devices and much more, these ships were supplied to most of the world, and the canal was from Asia and Europe to the Middle East. And they have a quick way to get to the east coast of the United States.
Canal authorities said Saturday that the dredgers had succeeded in digging the rear of the ship on Friday night, and by noon the shutters had descended 18 meters down the east bank of the canal, where the ship’s bow was strong. But, when the rescue team once again failed to evacuate the four-foot-l-ground-long Liviathan from the sandbank, where it blocked all naval traffic passing through the canal, the global supply chain was shaken to the point of full development.
Already, shipping analysts estimate that heavy traffic jams trade about 10 10 billion a day.
Alan Murphy, founder of Marine Data and Analysis Pay Sea-Intelligence, said all global retail trade runs in containers, or about 90 percent of them. “So everything is affected. Give any brand name, and it will get stuck on one of those ships. “
Relieving difficulties is based on the rescuer’s ability to remove sand, mud, and rock where ever given and lighten to help reload the ship, while tugboats try to push and pull it free. Their best chance could come on Monday, when a spring tide would raise the water level of the canal to about 18 inches, analysts and shipping agents said.
The company, which oversees the ship’s operations and crew, is helping 11 tugboats on Sunday, with two more people remaining, Bernhard Schultz Shipmanage said. The company said several dredgers, including a specialized suction dredger that could carry 2,000 cubic meters of material per hour, were digging around the ship’s bow.
From the deck of the tugboat, where Egyptian authorities allowed reporters to catch a glimpse of the rescue operation for the first time on Saturday evening, several boats that had barely reached the side of the ship were heading for the ship to keep it steady. Dredgers and heavy equipment were like toys under floodlights by the ship’s bow.
A powerful tugboat sat next to the ship’s stern, waiting for the next re-floating attempt. But the high tide, which was forecast for a while after 10:30 pm, came and went without progress.
Most of the work was invisible. Captain Nick Sloane, South Africa’s salvage master, said a team of eight Dutch rescue specialists and naval architects overseeing the operation would have to survey the ship and the seabed and build a computer model that would help it work around the ship without damaging it. Said Master Captain Nick Sloane. The cruise ship that sailed from Concordia, Italy in 2012, led the operation.
They will need to clear other ships from the area, a huge coordination effort. And they will need to take into account the possibility that Ever Gibbed’s grounding has rearranged the seabed, making it difficult for other ships to pass through the area even after it has moved, said Carin Consultant Capt. Paul Foran. Other rescue operations.
All the while, they should hope that the ever given remains intact. Since the ship is breaking down in the middle, holding both its bow and stiffness in a position for which it was not designed, the hull is susceptible to stress and cracks, both experts said.
Mohammed Moselle, owner of First Suez International, the canal’s marine logistics company, said teams of divers were already inspecting the hull and had not yet suffered any damage. But for the most part, Ever Given Murphy’s Law was self-defeating: everything that could go wrong is the largest in the world, starting with the size of the ship.
“It was the largest ship of the fleet, and it ended up in the worst part of the canal,” – said Captain Sloane, a narrow section. “And he was really unlucky.”
If tugboats, dredgers, and pumps cannot get the job done, they will join the head spinning array of specialized vessels and machines, requiring hundreds of workers: to siphon the fuel of small tanker vessels; The world’s tallest cranes to unload some of its containers one by one; And, if a crane is not tall enough or close enough, a heavy-duty helicopter that can carry containers of up to 20 tons – although no one has said where the cargo will go. (A full 40-foot container can weigh up to 40 tons.)
The head of the Suez Canal Authority, Lieutenant General Osama Rabbi, told a news conference on Saturday that while he hoped “we will not reach that stage,” officials are calling for ships with cranes to move some containers.
Although canal authorities and analysts are optimistic that the canal will be cleared by this weekend, Captain Sloane estimates that the operation will take at least a week. When a similarly sized vessel, the CSCL, ran into the Indian Ocean near the port of Hamburg in 2016, it took about six days to clear the Elbe River.
All this because, simply put, “this is a very large ship; “This is a very big problem,” said Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List, a London-based maritime intelligence publication. “I don’t think there’s any question that they’ve got what they want. It’s just a question, it’s a big problem. “
If the ship breaks down by Monday, the shipping industry could assume inconvenience, analysts said, but in addition, the supply chain and consumers could begin to see major disruptions.
Some ships have already decided not to wait, a U-turning from the Suez, on the south side of Africa, could add weeks to the voyage and cost more than 26 26,000 per day in fuel costs.
On Saturday, Lieutenant General Rabbi defended the canal’s safety record: 18,840 ships in 2020, zero accidents.
“What happened happens all over the world, and it will happen again,” he said. “The Suez Canal, as a passage, has nothing to do with this incident.”
In Manshit Rugola, whose name translates to “small village of Manude,” it would be difficult to imagine any kind of traffic jam in normal times.
Donkey carts have descended from a brick-lined clover to a brick-and-brick semi-paved road between brick houses and palm trees, trash, and green fields lined with animal dung. A teenager hung ice cream from a motorcycle. Rooster competed unholy to call at noon for prayer. The minarets of the uncomposing mosques were the tallest structures surrounding Ever Gived.
“Do you want to see the ship?” A young boy asked Bob to hit reporters in excitement under his car window. Around 7 a.m. on Tuesday, many woke up to a ship-like earthquake, after which Ever Given remained the only subject.
“The whole village was out watching,” said Yusuf Garib, 19, a factory worker. “We’ve gotten very used to being around him, because we’ve only been watching the ship for four days.”
It was universally agreed that the view was better at night, when the ship shone with light: a skyscraper, outside the big city skyline, fell on its side.
“It’s like the Titanic when it lights up at night,” said Nadia, who, like her neighbor Umm Gaffar, declined to give her full name because of security forces in the area. “All that’s missing is the film’s necklace.”
Umm Gaffar asked to go by her nickname so as not to run into passing government security personnel, and warned residents not to take a photo of the canal and spread unrest in general. Nadia said she was too scared to take photos of the ship at night, although she wanted badly.
Village people and shipping analysts had the same question about Ever Given, if rooted in different skills. The ship’s operators insisted that the ship ran aground due to strong winds of sandstorms, in which stacked containers acted like giant sails, although other ships in the same fleet passed without incident. The previous storm had previous ships, the villagers pointed out.
“We’ve seen bad winds,” said security guard Ahmed al-Sayyed, 19, “but nothing like this has ever happened before.” “
Capt. Foran, a marine adviser, said the two pilots on the Suez Canal usually help the boat move on larger boats so they can be operated by a crew member.
Shipping experts and government officials said the wind may have been a factor intensifying other physical forces, but they suggested a human error had been implemented.
Lieutenant General Rabbi said on Saturday that such a significant event usually occurs for a number of reasons: the weather was a cause, but it was a technical error or a human error.
Captain Foran had the same idea.
“I ask a lot of questions, why did he just go this way?” He said. “But they can talk about it all later. Right now, they want to get the animal out of the canal. ”
The report contributed to Nada Rashwa.
