Closer to home

Closer to home…A huge storm is bearing down on the entire U.S and Canadian west coasts, with record low pressure. Not a hurricane, exactly, but a monster. It’s likely California will be drenched, totally. A storm like this carries winds of hurricane force, and these winds kick up an awful sea state and swell. If you go to the Oregon coast right now you might see 30 foot surf. A relatively small container ship, the Zim Horizon, came through this storm on her way to Vancouver, surely pressing her speed to make her schedule and hold her place for a berth to unload (otherwise she would be anchored and waiting for days) and she lost 40 containers, the seas were so big, swept away. Then, once in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, near Victoria, Canada, containers in the third stack aft of the bow caught fire, surely cargo contents igniting somehow. The fire grew fast and became bad fast, the captain evacuated some of his crew, some local tugs appeared to fight the fire, there are concerns that water to fight the fires might interact with chemicals in the containers and make the fires worse, the Canadian Coast Guard has strongly suggested the captain abandon shop entirely, which of course the captain doesn’t want to do because then he loses the ship, the engines shut down, pressure for fire pumps is lost, and nobody is left aboard to fight the fire on the ship. A ship fire is a Continue Reading →