KARACHI: One of the vessels damaged on Monday in a collision at the South Asia Pakistan Terminals (SAPT), Keamari, sailed out for its next destination at 3.30pm on Wednesday, acco­r­ding to sources at the port.

As a special measure, they added, the ship — Hamburg Bay — was driven out from berth No.3 at SAPT by Karachi Port Trust (KPT) deputy conservator Asif Tony and was escorted by tugs till a fairway buoy in an off-port area of the Karachi port.

However, the other vessel, Tolten of Hapag-Lloyd which collided with Hamburg Bay, a stationary vessel, while it was in the process of being given a berth alongside, has been moved to non-operational berths for repair.

Sources said that the removal and retrieval of the sunken containers were still going on and the KPT had mobilised all its resources to clear the entire port basin as well as the approach channel.

The KPT has deployed another floating crane, Teeltal, to supplement the efforts of ‘Hati’ crane for retrieving the sunken containers for early clearance of the entire port from any hazardous elements.

With the help of divers from the Pakistan Navy, hooks were put on the boxes for pulling them by the cranes.

Immediately after the incident took place, all the containers which sank alongside berths 3 and 4 were removed in order to allow free movement to both the vessels involved in the accident.

Meanwhile, a new container ship, Almavia, is scheduled to reach SAPT on Thursday. The ship belongs to liner-service AS-1 and is operated by CMACGM-APL. This is also a large vessel with length overall of 305.6 metres and loading capacity of around 8,850 boxes (containers).

The ship’s last port of call was Singapore where it unloaded containers.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2018