SAN NARCISO — Operations at Pier 3, Port of San Narciso were interrupted yesterday after a stack of shipping containers fell and impacted a tugboat.
A group of nine women, who had been relaxing on the beach nearby, approached the pier at around 4:30 PM. They were seen by crane operator Prakash Rao, who was in the control cabin of a 60m container crane. “They all walked by right outside. The cabin shook around a bit. One of them even leaned down to peek inside the window,” he said. “She winked at me.”
Once on the pier, the women began picking up the stacked containers and examining them. “It was like they were looking for something,” said Philip Shin, a port supervisor who witnessed the event from across the water on Pier 2. “They would hold containers up to their ears and shake them, or squeeze them in different spots.”
The accident occurred when one of the women attempted to pick up an entire 5x2x2 stack of containers at once, but lost control of them. The containers tumbled off the side of the pier, where the tug Luca Siena was passing by. At least five containers impacted the Siena in the center and the port side, plunging it lower into the water and unbalancing it.
Quick action by the women on the scene averted disaster. One of them stabilized the stricken tugboat with her hands, preventing it from capsizing, while the others scooped up the fallen containers from the water and the deck of the Siena. Within minutes, the containers were again stacked safely on the pier, albeit not in their proper arrangement.
A total of six 12m shipping containers were severely deformed, while the Luca Siena suffered light abrasion on its hull and minor damage to internal cabin fixtures from the shock of the impact. There were no injuries.
The young women were later identified as Yuzhen Tsai (20), Eva Novak (20), Julia Lind (22), Ines Coelho (22), Xiaoyue Su (19), Mina Alvarez (21), Greta Solberg (21), Maria Pella (19), and Caroline Ledoux (21). All are students at San Narciso Polytechnic University, whose campus is less than 10 kilometers away from the port.
The students stated that they searched the containers in an attempt to locate goods they had ordered and believed to be stored in containers on the pier. “A lot of us had ordered new phones — that new folding one, you know? — and the order tracker said the shipment was sitting at the port. And Mina really needed it, her old phone's all scratched up from when she dropped it on a brick house. So we thought if they're sitting right over there, we could pick them up early,” explained Ms. Coelho. Ultimately, the group was unable to locate the correct containers.
Yesterday was not the first time an industrial accident at the container port has been linked to its proximity to the SN Poly campus. Last year, a forklift left in an open area on the pier was totaled after being stepped on by a student taking a shortcut back to campus. Industry analysts warn that further incidents could lead to an increase in insurance costs, which may cause freight forwarders to seek alternative routes.