The real-time image of what remains afloat from OS35 has been on the screens of the Port Authority of Gibraltar office since it became the region’s worst maritime disaster in more than a decade. The harbor master John Ghio is not to be scoffed at. He’s barely watching it out of the corner of his eye on his nearest monitor while detailing – as far as he can – on a merchant’s plan what the arduous plan is to rescue a 6,656-ton giant laden with another 33,632 tons made of steel, will be like. You don’t want delays, errors, or uncontrolled spills. The order to insure the ship is clear: the bulk carrier, which has been half-sunk on the east side of the rock since August 29, must get out of there before May 30. And he warns: “If we are not satisfied with the rescue work, we could take on these tasks at any time.”
Ghio and Gibraltar know what’s at stake. In the balanced record of diplomatic relations in the Straits, any event is likely to turn into a dry quarrel that was saved for the time being through much cooperation and good words between Spain and the Gibraltar authorities. Two and a half months after the disaster and having removed more than 331,000 liters of fuel, fuel and oil, La Roca is now focusing on detailing the draft rescue plan for Marine Insurance, QBE Europe SA/NV, commissioned by the owner to study Old Stone Management Ltd., a company managed from the port of Piraeus in Greece. The document – hundreds of pages long and submitted on November 9 – was drafted by the company TMC Marine, will be executed through tendering by Koole Contractors and will in turn be selected by the insurer from the seven companies you contacted. “We wanted them to be specialists to make the project as efficient and environmentally friendly as possible,” says Ghio, who, along with Eric Houtteman, the technical operations manager, has closely followed every step of the person responsible for the retailer of The Rock for this one case hired.
Although the OS35 appears to be half submerged in one piece 700 meters off the coast of Gibraltar from close range, in reality the damage sustained makes it impossible for the merchant vessel to fully exit the vicinity of Catalan Bay. “It’s impossible to get it going again as a unit. If it hadn’t broken, we could have removed it in four days,” explains the President of the Port Authority. But the bulk carrier buckled in half just two days after the accident. The hull, already damaged by the 10-meter leak caused by the collision with a methane tanker, was unable to withstand the tensions between the sunken bow and the floating stern, which authorities had to sink in a controlled manner to balance forces. Now, upon rescue, this destruction will roughly mark the area where the ship will be cut in two or three to extract it from the site.
Work on the sunken ship “OS35” stranded in Gibraltar. Marcos Moreno
However, the first step rescuers must take is to remove the 33,632 tons of steel rods that the 178-meter-long, 28-meter-wide merchant ship had on board at the time of the sinking. There are two possible destinations for the cargo: recycling or sale, depending on how the material is after those months underwater. Ghio is confident that once that weight is released, the tail and mid can regain their lost buoyancy. The situation is different with the bow, which is so damaged that “buoyancy aids” or chains will probably have to be used to hoist this part onto another transportable ship.
The determining factors are as varied as they are complex, which is why the project was considered open to different options in order to avoid surprises and last-minute decisions. The rescue team has to deal with the frequent storms in the straits in winter and cannot split the ship up near holds 2 and 5, below which are the tanks where the fuel oil was stored. For all of these tasks, OS35 insurance plans to use “very specialized machines” located in various ports around the world, albeit with a commitment to “complete them before May 30,” says Ghio, also president of the Port Authority . After removal from site, the two parts will be scrapped directly in a European Union approved scrap company – if transport is reasonable – or they will be dismantled beforehand in the shipyards of Gibraltar.
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Beyond the end date – which is already set in a mandatory deadline Gibraltar has imposed on the insurer – the priority for Ghio is to “minimize the risk of spills” as they already hit the beaches of Gibraltar in the days following the event and Linen concerned . And that’s the most difficult challenge, considering that “it is estimated that at least 1% of fuel oil residues remain on the walls and internal bars of the tanks,” according to the captain. “Even today, we extract and vacuum those remains before they come out,” Ghio adds. Although OS35’s image today is a far cry from that of the early days when it was surrounded by boats from the Port of Gibraltar and Spanish Sea Rescue, work in the area continues. For the past few weeks, specialists from Resolve Marine Services – the company appointed by the bulk carrier’s insurance company for this initial work – have dived into the ship to carry out these extraction tasks, despite the hardware preventing them access to the tanks. located under the cargo holds. They have also cleaned the interior of the rooms that remain afloat of all sorts of furniture and belongings that could become garbage in the event of a mishap.
Work on the sunken ship “OS35” stranded in Gibraltar. Marcos Moreno
The port of Gibraltar is called annually by 9,000 to 10,000 ships, like the OS35, coming to refuel at sea – a maneuver known as bunkering, legal but condemned by environmentalists – to change crews or to get supplies. Four cameras, three radar devices and various technical means report this hectic movement day and night to the control tower in the port of Gibraltar. It was the same people who, at around 9.25pm on the night of September 29, realized that something was not going well when the bulk carrier’s captain – who was arrested and subsequently investigated – disobeyed the Gibraltarian captain’s orders. The sea-experienced man of Syrian nationality thought he had enough space to avoid a methane tanker anchored next to the port, but a lateral shift crashed into its bulbous bow. In the control tower, they noticed the impact and warned the captain to stop. The person examined decided to continue his march until the leak so complicated the integrity of him and his twenty sailors that he agreed to the captain’s instructions to get as close as possible to the shore so that the ship ran aground in a controlled manner Sandbar on the east face of the rock.
The Port of Gibraltar’s quick response prevented the tragedy from becoming more complex. The fall of the oil tanker Prestige, which sank off the coast of Galicia 20 years ago, showed just how dangerous it is to move a ship off shore. In August 2007, the merchant ship New Flame collided with another ship in the strait, opening a leak to the former. The distance to the coast and the storms also made rescue difficult. The merchant ship broke up two months later and the two parts did not fully recover until August 2008. In October of the same year the Fedra finally ran aground in Gibraltar after being swept away by a strong storm from the area where she was anchored (about 90 meters deep) with engine problems. The OS35 is almost 17 meters deep and partly protected from rough seas by its location in a natural bay.
Gibraltar Harbor Master John Ghio (standing) in the Harbor Master’s office. Marco Moreno
“There is a big difference between the treatment of this case and what has happened in previous cases like Fedra,” explains Ghio, who became port captain earlier this year. The President assures that coastal states have improved their protection against disasters in recent years through international agreements such as that in Nairobi, which set out strict guidelines for subsidence, such as the obligation to report accidents or the disposal of remains is the responsibility of the owner. But like everything in the straits, understanding between Gibraltar and Spain also played a role in the case of OS35. El Peñón has already extensively compared the plan to the Algeciras captain. “It’s ridiculous to try to hide anything. Discharges know no bounds,” Ghio concludes with satisfaction.
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